Ideas on Creating a HOD COOP Experience

[4HG]

Hello, Ladies:

I am wondering if any of you have used HOD skills as a format for your CO-OPs and am looking for ideas as to how to potentially start a HOD CO-OP for my daughter and just a few other children/families.

Our family dynamic includes one dd who is extremely social, age 8, who of course, enjoys interaction with other children, both younger and older. We currently participate in a CO-OP that is entirely academic and although I say to myself that we are participating in it to gain the social benefits, we end up getting "lured in" to trying to keep up with the academics (otherwise we feel like a "fish out of water" when we show up for class and have not completed the necessary work in order to participate). Our HOD coursework does not get our full attention...which means we end up not getting its full benefit either! It is time for a correction to this situation!

I have been praying about this and was led to ask myself this question: "What would it take for you to give up the academic CO-OP?" The answer...find a HOD CO-OP! I called HOD and received great information from Julie (thank you so much!) who also encouraged me to post my question on the Board.

Fellow HOD users, I'd so appreciate your ideas!

Many thanks in advance.

Blessings,
Karen

[happyhome]

I am working on doing this as well with a small group of families. Like you, I love HOD but am trying to find a way to add the accountability/social to our week. We are doing Beyond with our younger kids and some different options with the older kids. We are currently planning to do a light Spanish curriculum, rotating 6 six week study of oceans, pilgrims, forest animals, pioneers, and native Americans, and a show and tell and review of the week's learning. We will probably throw in some supplemental story-time read aloud as well. I am still in the planning stages but would be very curious as to what your thoughts are and what guide you are using. It would seem that all the kids would need to be using the same guide for any co-op to work.
Blessings on your year!

[Nealewill]

Well, I think this is quite a conundrum worth pondering. There are so many moms on here who love having co-op but who also really prefer the HOD products over other products that are available. Where I live, there really aren't enough users of HOD to make a co-op only dedicated to this. Plus, HOD is meant to be very independent as the kids get older so I definitely don't need a co-op to help teach most of the subjects.

What I have done is I try and teach one or two subjects at my co-op and I use one of the HOD products to teach it. So far, next year my oldest dd will take the science and writing from RevtoRev at co-op. This is wonderful for me and I am not even teaching it! I have showed other moms that books that wanted to teach those two subjects and they are on fire about it. I like this opportunity because my kids can still take something at co-op, see their friends, and use the product I am planning to use anyway. For my younger kids, it is a bit more challenging because they are reading a lot more living books or their lessons are much shorter and I can't really have the co-op take anything off of my plate there. I have also taught DITHOR at co-op as well. My co-op does offer an IEW class every three years. I could have had my dd take it this year at co-op but I ended up not doing it. It didn't cover the same number of style activities as the Medieval had nore did it include the vocab. Co-op was offering the Student Intensive Level B and not a theme based writing program. In hindsight, I probably should have had my dd take it since it is very similar and just had her do the vocab portion from this level at home. I could have had her target those words and use them in her written narrations. But all in all, we only did a half day of co-op this year because I needed a break so we ended choosing a different class at that time slot

But in general, that is my recommendation. I would personally try and have the co-op teach something for you that you were going to use already. All in all though - for us, co-op is one day a week. If I can't find anything that meets this requirement, then my kids take electives that have no homework. This way they can still learning something fun (for example - next year I am teaching chess and business math - both fun with minimal to no homework) and then we have 4 days a week to do HOD. IMHO, I find that I can start planning to teach classes for co-op based on the level my kids are in. And when co-op isn't in session, we usually do school 5 days a week to get done earlier if we can.

Below is a list of classes I would consider letting my co-op teach as long as they used the same curriculum books that I am using. And my co-op meets on Mondays for 24 weeks total - 12 in the fall and 12 in the spring. It wouldn't necessarily line up completely like the HOD material but they would at least learn the same material and enough of it.

Levels Bigger - MtMM - DITHOR. This one is great because you can just read 4-6 books over the year depending on the wants of the other parents and I even let my kids choose between a boy and girl option
CtC - Write With the Best, Land Animals Apologia Book (I would just have my child do the science out of order for when co-op is not in session - like the bird book or the plant book), Water color paintings and poetry. You could possibly do the geography book and/or the Genesis book but I really liked keeping those lessons short and sweet and personally would prefer to do those at home.
RtR - IEW Writing; multiple or individual selections of the science book for the year- Astronomy Book, Geography, Exploring Planet Earth; Boy or Girl Study
RevtoRev - US Study, Signer Study, Story of Clssical Music study with the Composer Study, Exploring Education, or the Exciting World of Creative Writing
MtMM - President Study, Nature Study, State Study, Write with the Best 2, Evolution - The Grand Design
WG - Mapping the World by Art, Logic, Essentials in Writing, Integrated Physics and Chemistry.
WH - Old Testament Survey, Pilgrims Progress, one of the items from the Fine Arts Package, Essentials in Writing, Total Health, Biology
US1 - New Testament Survey, A Noble Experiment, Constitutional Literacy, In their Sandals, Chemistry
US2 - Financial Peace University, Selection from the Economics Items, I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, Science, Writing, maybe another elective (? - not sure what else since the curriculum hasn't been fully divulged yet)

Honestly, I have been pondering how to make co-op work from my family for a while. I truly don't need it but my kids love it. Above is my personal plan on topics I would consider teaching at co-op so that if I wanted to, I could get a few educational classes in while still using same books as HOD. One thing to note is that if I did teach science in the lower levels at co-op, I would not necessarily assign the work using the HOD manual. For example, I won't be using the manual to assign notebooking activities and questions to answer. I would instead have my students get the notebooks that go along with the text books and have them do the journaling, answer questions, and the likes based on the schedule provided by Apologia. It wouldn't be exactly like HOD necessarily but it would use the same book. And my kids could then do some of the activities, like experiments, with the other kids in the class. If there were things I wanted them to do from HOD - like the specific notebooking Carrie assigns - I would have my kids draw and write that stuff in that journal specifically. Also, the items and books I listed were chosen because they could be done very stand alone-ish. As I pondered what I could teach at co-op (or have someone else teach), I wanted materials where you could easily set a schedule without worrying about using anything that is copyrighted from HOD. The only thing that I listed that is directly from HOD is the DITHOR material. I did make all of my students get their own student workbook and they had to work through that. In addition, because our co-op only meets 24 weeks a year, there may be some classes where the students need to do some of the work before the class starts, they will be doing some work over the break and they may have to finishing the course up after the co-op finishes meeting. This would mainly pertain to the high school courses such as writing and science. But in general, other things chosen won't necessarily save you huge chunk of time because they already aren't things that take up a lot of time already. Some of the courses would be chosen purely because many of the kids at co-op need that course anyways and it is an easy way to make the hour in the co-op class count for something. This would be the classes like boy/girl study, US study, state study, president study, mapping, logic, art, finance, economics, and the likes.

[scrapper4life]

So I'm new and haven't done this yet but I was thinking of trying to do a co-op with younger kids, like LHFHG/Beyond age. I was thinking we could just save the activities from the rotating box and do them on co-op day since alot of those activities can be fun in groups. I was also thinking of including some team problem solving/cooperative activities and music. Maybe even in older elementary, dare I say, preparing a play or musical program? That may be too ambitious for me as I am not artsy, but maybe another mama can be "the director."

[StephanieU]

Another "good" thing to do as a co-op is recite anything they have memorized. It is a great time for them to practice their public speaking and "show off" what they have learned.
There used to be a laid back CM co-op in our area (they have sense become more focused, making it hard for us to do that and HOD, so we had to stop), and they would do nature walks with recitation time at the "top" of the walk. It was a nice time to stop, have a snack, and listen to everyone before heading back to the cars.

[luv2homeschool]

I think it would be too hard to do a co-op based on a specific curriculum. I have a co-op with 4 other moms. Every single one of us is using something different with our kids. We all share a common faith, though, and that makes all the difference. We do a field trip, presentation day, lego club, and art class every month.

[MelInKansas]

This isn't answering the original question really, but I felt "stuck" in the same place as some of you describe: the co op takes time away from the school work I want my children to do, and yet it seems like such a vital part of their experience and they obviously love it.

We are not rejoining our co op for the next school year. It was just too much - things have changed with my husband's work responsibilities, so he's not as available for everyday things like he used to be. The thing I am discovering is that we enjoyed the relationships, but the structured event that was helping to create the relationships was too much.

So what do we do now? (And what do we do all summer anyway when co ops and weekly events aren't meeting?) We plan to meet other families at the park, we plan casual field trips together, we try to enjoy fellowship and build relationships without having a structured time to go there each week.

Of course it's going great so far, because it's May and there are so many opportunities, and we do already have these relationships.

I just thought I would encourage others, that you don't HAVE to have a co op in order to have these relationships.

And DaNeale, I am so surprised that you list "growing into a woman" as a class you would want your co op to teach. I interpret those kind of studies and discussions as more private. I don't even want my younger kids listening in on it when I read and discuss it with my daughter. I want to really hear her heart, which I don't know if I would do if I did it in a more public setting.

[Nealewill]

For the girl or boy study I would only go through the books Beautiful Girlhood or Boyhood and Beyond. I would not cover the booklets on how your body changes nor would I cover the book What is God's Design for my Body. Those are definitely books that should be ready by the parents!

One thing that made me consider these other books as options for a co-op setting is that there are several families at my co-op who already own them and have shared with me how much they liked those books. I actually was kind of surprised so many parents even knew of the books much less owned them. If I were to use these books in a co-op setting, I would probably tackle them a little bit differently from the way they are done in the HOD guide. I would probably include service projects or some type of hands on craft (or manly project). I don't know that I would even cover the entire book. I would pick the 24 chapters I liked most and make all about character training with some form of hands on application. I would tell parents in advance which chapters I was going to cover and it would be up to them to cover those other chapters.

[4HG]

Greetings, Ladies:

First, a big "thank you" to all of you who have posted such wonderfully practical and in-depth responses to my question. You have given me great "food for thought" regarding what to do here. Obviously, many of you have been thinking about this question in a deep way for a longer period of time than I have and have come up with fantastic suggestions I have never considered. Thank you. (Also, my apologies in not acknowledging your great thoughts sooner. We have been out of town for a week plus on a ministry trip and I have not had the joy of logging on to this fantastic Board!)

Nealewill, your comment that you would try and have the co-op teach something for you that you were going to use already hit the nail on the head. HOD is so rich in its offerings that I believe that experiencing them with others would only deepen the educational experience. Any many thanks for your detailed comments and thinking regarding HOD specific courses that could be co-op led. I'll be holding on to those specifics for future use in planning.

ANOTHER QUESTION: Many of you have access to very active, well-run and established co-ops that you can access readily. Although I am a member of our local homeschooling support group we don't offer a co-op currently because we discovered from the one that we did successfully run a few years ago that it took a TREMENDOUS amount of energy and time to orchestrate. Those of us who taught it found we were already stretched to the max with homeschooling our own children, dealing with life in general, etc, Teaching at the co-op was simply too much of a strain on an already stretched life. So, we stopped.

So, WHAT SUGGESTIONS do you have as to how to start a co-op and make it "doable" without breaking the "time and energy" bank? What works and what doesn't? What methods yield the biggest benefits to both you and your children? Bulleted lists of ideas would be great if you don't have time to write a more detailed response.

Many thanks in advance.

[MelInKansas]

Based on the two elementary co ops we have here in town here are a few thoughts.

1 - have a small dedicated board for the co op who make decisions, communicate, and make sure things are running smoothly
2 - have two dedicated teachers per class who share the planning/teaching workload
3 - rotate teachers every 6-8 weeks (in our group 1/2 of the parents were "on" and half "off" during each 6 week block, though the "off" parents did have to be available to sub if there were teachers who were sick, or who had to stay at home with sick kids).
4 - emphasize to members that they should not see attendance as "optional."
5 - make sure all teachers and those working with the kids know the rules and follow the rules, make sure classrooms are managed well
6 - pick and choose, make sure co op classes are really the most beneficial done in a group (don't do more than you have to).

The co op I was in really does share the load pretty evenly. The time was what was getting to be too much. We couldn't have most of one whole weekday taken away, I was struggling too much to get the HOD work done. All of what they've learned has been so valuable, but for us it was time to move on.