Learning with friends

I have to say, I love to look outside at Sweet Clarabell and see the chickens walking around next to her – makes me feel like this is really a farm (of sorts).

    We are in the midst of eating another turkey, Pablo said his final farewells on Wednesday, it was a good day for us.

The Best part of Wednesday though was not the Turkey Tacos for dinner, it was not killing the turkey (half my kids were afraid of), it was in fact our new Co-op! 

We started a “dreamy” Charlotte Mason style co-op; we meet each Wednesday!  I have always longed for such a co-op, so I am still a bit amazed it is actually happening!! 

 

So, we meet at our house, we study the following subjects : Courageous Christian, Hymn Study, Nature Study, Artist Study, and Composer Study.  Occasionally we will include an art project of some sort, but that is going to be a big variable.

We have four families involved, and we all go to church together too, even more fun!  So once our school part of our co-op is over, we have a pot-luck style supper and then head to Bible Drill at our church.  The kids love to play in between and we love to visit and encourage one another.

This week was our first week, so we are still tweaking a few things.  We have 10 kids ranging ages from 4 to 11 – and they all seem to get along quite well!  We get just about all of our school stuff done in about 2 hours and then let the kids play.  We are looking forward to some great studies and lots of fun fellowship too – who says homeschoolers are not socialized??

For art study this year we are going to look at 2-4 pictures from the following artists (this year we chose all America artists and I cannot wait to spend some time with each of these pictures) :

Beatrix Potter

Grant Wood

Fredrick Remington

Gilbert Stewart

John Copley

Mary Cassatt

Norman Rockwell

Winslow Homer

I have taken advantage of lots of Snapfish deals this summer to print copies of many pictures so that we can use those for our art study.

My dear friend found a curriculum on her shelf of an amazing Nature Study so we are really looking forward to doing that as well!

Needless to say, I think Wednesday may be our new favorite day of the week!!