Co-op Cousins

We’ve missed co-op the last couple weeks and my poor three year old came up asking for a playdate with his buddy, saying he missed him. I wrote my friend to tell her this and she mentioned that her kids didn’t remember when our co-op was a craft group (back when it started in February 2007.) We started meeting weekly (with some time off for summers/hoidays/babies) almost five years ago. Other families have come and gone, the group has ranged dramatically in size but some of our families have remained consistent. It’s interesting to realize that except for our oldest, NONE of my children remember life before co-op. They’ve grown up with these children – they are like cousins – and my younger children won’t know what life was like without them. I LOVE that! Especially as I’m an Army brat and I never lived anywhere longer than 3 years. I am so thankful that my children are growing up with this network of love and support and friendship.

Literature Co-op List

Oct: Sarah, Plain & Tall (H) pioneer activities
Nov: The Indian in the Cupboard (K) Native American
Dec: Christmas themed storybooks (R) card, ornament, etc.
Jan: The Boxcar Children (H)
Feb: Rescuers (R)
Mar: Harriet the Spy (K) cake & milk
Apr: Babe (H) farm themed activities
May: The Lemonade Wars (K) lemon stand, economics

Co-op Reunion!

We’ve not been meeting with our co-op friends this summer but our kids were anxious to see their friends so we coordinated a visit that coincided with old friends coming to town! We started to meet with these three families in February of 2007 and I think we’ve added 5 1/2 kids since then, but we had lots to start (10 kids between our four families?) There have been other families over the years that have joined us at various times but we’re the ones still holding on. 🙂 It was wonderful to catch up with them today:

Miss O was actually napping on the floor but when I was getting their attention for that photo I woke her up:

I love seeing how our families have grown over the years and the friendships that have developed between all of us.

Preschool/Pre-K

Today was B’s speech time Valentine Party – they have a little girl that just joined so it’s five kids including Ben. They exchanged valentine’s & treats and he came home with a bag of goodies! He’s really enjoyed this group speech program and it’s worked out well. Though I do hope he’ll be ready to graduate after this semester, for his sake and for our budget’s sake. 🙂

I mentioned in that old link that each of our older kids had a year of preschool/pre-K the year they were four. Christopher attended a 3 hour once a week preschool that a friend ran in her home. It was Ben’s first winter at home and we couldn’t risk any co-ops or groups so it was good for C to have a chance to play and visit with friends (and Miss Amy was fantastically diligent about handwashing so C never caught a bug to bring home.) Moira attended a 2 hour once a week speech group/preschool that was just down the street from our home right after Emiline was born and it was really beneficial for her speech but also fun for her socially. And now Bennett’s in a speech program twice a week, 30 minutes of individual speech then an hour of the group (for 2 hours total with the other kids.) I can see how it’s helping his conversational skills and he’s connecting with the other kids.

I pursued the pre-K for C because of circumstances (fragile new baby) but it’s been nice that with the speech needs we could combine the pre-K and therapy for the next two kids. Also convenient since both times I had a new baby and couldn’t participate in a co-op that focused on that age.

I’m not sure if we’ll pursue a group of any sort for Emiline. She’s starting kindergarden in the fall and in so many activities already (PE, co-op, swimming) that I don’t know when we could fit it in or if it’s necessary, since she has so many social interactions anyway. I don’t think the pre-K is necessary for any academic reason, we did it only for the social (for C during our isolation) and for the speech therapy. I can see a benefit for extroverted first born kids to have that time but for subsequent kids, especially if they are introverted, I think it’s not crucial if they have siblings and social meet ups during the week.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’m consolidating posts from years past all here:

(This I wrote while pregnant with Joseph) – I feel really bad that we didn’t do anything to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day until this evening and we lost this wonderful opportunity to teach the kids more. Next year I’ll prepare ahead of time (and not have morning sickness) and make it a bigger deal. We read to Christopher from “My First Book of Biographies” about MLK and Rosa Parks and then watched two speeches on-line. It was really neat to see his eyes and watch how fascinated he was and then to answer some questions about segregation. He asked if we can bake a cake to celebrate MLK’s birthday. 🙂

So, I’ve not started researching yet for next year but how did you commemorate? Any good websites or books to help kids learn more about the Civil Rights Movement? Christopher asked how people celebrate and I was sad to say I cannot remember ANY celebration growing up! Isn’t that terrible? Like President’s Day or Labor Day or Memorial Day or Veteran’s Day – it’s a day off of school but shouldn’t it be so much more??? Especially these days to remember these heros… I resolve to be better this year about using these opportunities to teach our kids why these days are important and what we are remembering.

From 2009:

The official site from the government and some fun preschool ideas.

We are reading a biography of him from Christopher’s kids’ biography book. We also watched clips from two of his speeches and will be making a handprint wreath in different colored papers and writing on them ideas we can do this next year to serve others. We’ll be doing a diversity dinner (spread out over the whole week – lots of diversity dinners) using some recipes from our kids’ international cookbook.

I think as the kids are older we’ll exploring the diversity in cooking more, we found a great book about it.

I want to find some fun activities for tomorrow to help the kids understand the ceremony and hopefully today will help them appreciate in some small way the significance of tomorrow. 🙂 I’m still looking for some good inauguration sites for the kids, any ideas?

Update: Snagging this from the library. The entire speech with illustrations!

Update for 2011: quotes here to discuss with kids & have older ones practice their cursive writing one out then illustrating/decorating it to hang up on their new magnetic dry erase board.

Start at 10:00 for little clip for kids to watch in co-op.

Update: here’s a photo of the hands wreath we made with their “I have a dream” statement or picture on it.

We’ve met almost weekly with these friends through various forms of co-op for four years next month! We first started meeting in February 2007 when Emy was itty bitty and here we are many children later. 🙂 (And that photo isn’t even all the kids between our two families.)

Free downloads from iTunes of Great African American Oratory.

Co-op Calendar 2010-2011

September – Heidi
October – first and fourth week (park dates?) depending on baby’s arrival, skipping second and third weeks.
November – J
December – K
January – Heidi
February – J
March – K
April – Heidi
May – J
June – K

We’ll be meeting for about an hour and each week will read a storybook then do a storychart (character, setting, plot, theme) and an activity then a snack (fruits or veggies since we’re doing close to dinner and have various allergy needs) and a few minutes of play time before everyone heads home. I’m really excited!

We have 12 kids (we’re not counting the one that will sleep through co-op once she arrives) including 3 two year olds and the other 9 kids are almost nine years down through almost four years.

Plans:
And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street – I decided to use the activities from the Cub Scout geography belt loop:

Draw a map of your neighborhood. Show natural and manmade features. Include a key or legend of map symbols.

Learn about the physical geography of your community. Identify the major landforms within 100 miles. Discuss with an adult what you learned.

Use a world globe or map to locate the continents, the oceans, the equator, and the northern and southern hemispheres. Learn how longitude and latitude lines are used to locate a site.

Green Eggs & Ham – discuss our tongue and salty, sweet, bitter, sour. Use various foods to let the kids taste test.

Alice the Fairy – make crowns/tiaras.

Fox in Socks – I’ll make socks out of cardstock or cardboard and hole punch some for the younger kids but have the older kids cut out & hole punch it themselves. We’ll wrap a little piece of tape around the end of yarn and have the kids sew the socks (Who sews Sue’s socks?)

I wanted to do activities that would engage all of the kids but obviously some are aimed more at older some weeks, younger kids other weeks. We’ll see how it goes.

Various poetry books: discuss a very, very brief overview of what a poem is and have kids make greeting cards with a verse of poetry in it.

Johnny Appleseed: cut open apple, look at seeds and discuss plants briefly, have kids collect and trace leaves, discuss why leaves change colors in fall.

Fall Plans & Unit Study

After a fun morning with friends at our “NOT back to school” picnic we talked & are meeting again with our co-op this week to see what we should do for this year. We hadn’t decided if we were going to keep meeting as families had new babies and moved but we’ve invited another family to join and we’re eager to see what we can come up with – this will be our fourth year together! We’ll be meeting on Thursday afternoons so I swapped our literature Friday with our history Thursday (since history is more involved for us.)

We are starting our Story of the World book one again this year with activity guide and when Christopher saw me pull it out he exclaimed, “I love that!” That’s a good sign. 🙂 But we’re actually starting formally next week and doing things a bit out of order. Christopher’s currently fascinated by all things related to Greek mythology so we’re skipping ahead to those chapters and doing a unit study. I checked out a ton of books from the library (fiction, non-fiction, picture, chapter, craft, etc) and he’s looking up Greece in all of our atlases and kids’ geography books like Circling the Globe. We’ll do some map work and current social studies (and ask my sister for some input since she lived in Greece for 18 months on her mission to Athens) and embrace his passion. (This is all prompted by his racing through the Percy Jackson book series – he’s in book four now. I started reading it to him and got through two chapters, one a night, before he gave up on his poky mother’s pace and walked off to finish the book himself. And then books two and three…)

Though I remember very little from my mythology studies so I’m having to scramble to keep up with him! He’s drawn a family tree of the goddesses and gods and characters from the book and is enthralled. I love it!

Dancing Time

We’ve been out in the sunroom now for hours and the kids are having a blast. I turned on iTunes and while we aren’t done cleaning & sorting, I’m having fun watching them dance their little hearts out. This will be wonderful for them:

Thanks to Grandma we have quite a stash of dance stuff, now that I dig it out of the dress up box. Tap shoes, ballet slippers, skirts, leotards, tights. They’re having fun dressing up in preparation for tomorrow and I found some grey t-shirts and shiny black soccer shorts for both older boys.

Mo was giving him some pointers:

Mommy’s magic feet:

E helping C find the flow:

And our happy little ballerina:

New Service Group

We met a family a bit ago at the Kid Power workshop and then ran into them again at our PE program. They are friends of friends and invited us to participate in a new program they have started called Roots & Shoots. The program is international (and you can read about it here) but our group meets in our town and actually at the park closest to our house. It’s every other week and the kids, with adult assistance, plan and carry out service activities. Today they made paper cards they’ll be decorating to give away and the grown ups learned how to crochet reusable shopping bags to use and/or give away to others.

It seems like a really, really neat group of families and the kids had a blast. Mo knew some of the kids from PE and was ecstatic to see them again and C quickly made friends with two boys his age. At least two of the families live nearby and most seemed to have “alternative” diets like us (vegan, GF, one raw family, etc.) I think we’ll learn a lot and have a fun time.

While I’m excited to meet more homeschooling friends I’m also really happy that the kids will have a community based group of peers to focus on service activities with – we have some of those opportunities at church but not like this.

Bubble, Bubble!

Our history group studied Shakespeare today and did some brewing like in Macbeth.

Here are the kids gathering with their dragon scales, eye of newt, and toe of frog. 🙂 I thought it was interesting the history book refers to them as the weird old women, they do not call them witches. And when Lady Macbeth kills herself they say she “died of a guilty conscience.” Which I think is nice, it lets us explain as appropriate for our kids’ age/maturity level. (And Katie’s right, I should point out that the real speech from Macbeth is very NOT PG rated. I like the Lamb kids’ versions of Shakespare – they edit as needed for kids. Shakespeare does have some gruesome stuff…)

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The baboon’s blood was red vitamin water. VERY yummy brew. 🙂

1 WITCH. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
2 WITCH. Thrice and once, the hedge-pig whin’d.
3 WITCH. Harpier cries:—’tis time! ’tis time!
1 WITCH. Round about the caldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.—
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one;
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
3 WITCH. Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
Witches’ mummy; maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark;
Root of hemlock digg’d i the dark;
Liver of blaspheming Jew;
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse;
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips;
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,—
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingrediants of our caldron.
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH. Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.