Our very first meeting...

Homeschool Co-Op Mtg.

April 10th

Thanks to all who could come out and help plan the beginning of this Maricopa Homeschool Co-Op. The shaping and molding begins now as we work together to start a co-op to bless the lives of anyone who wants to participate. We will try hard to meet everyone’s needs. You may not be able to participate in every class and that's OKAY, but we will try to make this simple for all. I loved all the input from everyone!

We began our mtg. with introductions and then went over the 9 principles of Good Parenting that we hope to have as our foundation of this homeschool co-op. To review these or learn more about them, please visit the book Real Love in Parenting by Dr. Greg Baer MD. We can also discuss anything via email, if you’d like.

The following is what we decided:

One day a week, a few hours in the morning, is what the majority would like. After brainstorming and coming up with a lot of ideas we narrowed it down to what we feel could fit into a 3-3 ½ hour morning block of time. We started with using only Fri. and needed to move it so the core group could come. Thurs. will be the best fit for now. After talking about all the fun classes we’d like there were two that weren’t able to fit into the schedule. That’s when another morning was discussed. We agreed on Tues. morning to try out for PE and Art.

All the moms have voiced how they want to contribute to the group, which makes all of our jobs a lot easier! Yeah! There is not a perfect schedule written up. This is still a work in progress.

Here’s the list of the moms contributing what they can:

Math-Desiree

Social Studies-Andrea (Once a wk class instruction), Michelle (Quarterly presentations w/ Guest Speakers & Debra (Helping w/ younger children)

PE –Jenny & Debra

Spanish-Lynn

Music Ed.-Anna

GOPHER (VERY important)-Brandi (Willing to copy, retrieve, substitute, and be there for anything else we can think of.)

Lynn is working on checking w/ the Villages for a location. My house is a back up to help get things started. Others have offered their home also ie. Debra, Desiree, Andrea (?).

It’s time to start looking for the curriculum we want to use. However, those who want to keep with the Country/Continent theme for the month needs to check with Andrea & Michelle for that. This would only compliment their teaching as a unit study would and may help the kids internalize it better. It is, however, not required.

The next get together again is Fri., May 15^th at 10 a.m. in my home to discuss what we’ve found and try to finalize some details.

In the meantime I will be sending a roster for everyone with names, phone #s, and emails. We will also have a group email starting so please push “Reply All” each time you want to respond to let everyone help out with questions.

Please post any questions and progress you make as we go along!

We understand that our rough draft is very rough and will need to be fine-tuned. Thanks to all who came and helped in the planning!