Co-op

This year's theme was biology for science and Ancients for History and Scripture overview (the big picture).

8:30am Mass
9:30am abortion clinic decade
10am at my house for a quick breakfast (20 min)
10:30 am High School Lit - I assigned the books and taught the class (1 1/2 - 2 hrs)
10:30 am Middle School & Jr. High biology taught by another mom (1hr)
11:30 am play break for younger kids
12:00 pm lunch for all
1:00pm Biology labs for High school kids taught by another mom(2hrs)
1:00pm History for middle & elem taught by me(1hr)
2:00pm Bible for middle & elem taught by another mom(1/2 hr)

Co-op video from my blog and a few pictures from my blog -- we were pretty busy teaching and didn't have time to take many pictures - bummer!

Hist - I used RC history and another friend bought books based on the time period.
Sci - For the Middle school & elementary crowd we used 1 semester of RS4K + Ellen McHenry activities and 1 semester of Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology

Mainly, I used RC History with my kids and we did the co-op on topics I chose from RC History. RC was like our outline for the co-op, but my friend had her middle schooler enrolled in the online history class through Homeschool Connections.

I chose topics for the week in history (ex: Alexander the Great or The Fall of the temple or certain emperors of Rome). I might ask a few discussion questions to start and decide on an activity.

* Sometimes I'd read from a book I knew my friend hadn't bought and I hadn't exposed my kids to, yet.
* I added quite a few group games & activities that weren't in the lesson plans (make your own laws like Hammurabi -or- update Hamurabi's
laws for today -or- Roman Empire Jeopardy, What Star Wars characters correspond to which historical Roman figure, etc.)
* Often we'd have lunch together based on history (Greek salad -or- a Roman banquet, etc.)
* Sometimes we'd just do discussion or just do an activity, but usually it was a mix of the two.

It worked out fantastic!! My friend taught 1hr of biology & 30 min of Bible to the elementary & middle school kids while I taught a 2 hr high school literature class, we'd break for a combined lunch and they we switched and the high schoolers did biology while I taught history & some deeper theology. Everyone learned ALOT and had a blast. The kids are all sad that it's ending.

Jenn

The plan is to do it again for the Middle Ages & Chemistry next year.