Typical Day at our Coop

Here is what a typical day looks like at "school"

Play Time

Drop-off time at school is 8:30AM.  We are currently made up of four families and have seven kids.  We intend to be more of a homeschool setting than a school, so we try to make it as engaging with the kids as possible.  They usually just want to hang out with their friends once they first see them in the morning.  Play time first thing in the morning allows for them to get some energy out, connect with their friends, and let the parents chat a bit before getting into the school day.

Sharing Time

Z sharing about his last book that he read

Once we've gathered all the kids together, we have sharing time.  I do this mostly to ward off rabbit trail conversations and questions throughout the morning.  I have each kid come up individually and usually ask them a question.  Usually, it's something like, "What did you do this weekend?"  Or maybe it's "Show and Tell".  Many of the kids have so many stories to tell, and it really helps for them to feel heard by me and their peers.

Bible
We more recently integrated more Bible into our school day.  Really, I feel like this is where our school morning actually begins.  We memorize a Bible Verse each week using Seeds Family Worship songs.  Right now, we are using ones that have been put to video as well, so I get the kids to get up and dance will singing the lyrical Bible verse.

We also read a Bible story.  One of the moms had Desmond Tutu's Children of God Storybook Bible, so we are currently working our way through that.  Each story is very short, but it gives us more time to have the kids tell me back the story or ask questions about what is going on.

Handwriting or Writing
I have the kids do all sorts of things for handwriting and writing.  For handwriting, I use Penny Gardner's Italics book, and I love this handwriting generator for tracing and copywork.  Depending on ability, I have the kids trace or copy out the weekly Bible verse.

The kids each have their own writing book as well.  Sometimes I have them narrate our Bible story, give a writing prompt, or even just write out their numbers (going the right way, please!).

Math
Since all the kids have come from various math backgrounds, the kids are doing different things at different levels.  Some are using Singapore Math, and the others are using Khan Academy.  We also supplement with RightStart Math and Starfall for extra practice.

Sometimes I wish that I had been with these kids from their first exposure with numbers.  RightStart Math was incredible for my kids at the early ages.  I'm also realizing that there are some really amazing curriculums that I was unfamiliar with that I'd like to explore further.  Maybe in the future, we will do more with those including CSMP Math and Beast Academy.

Snack
Kids start math when they finish with their handwriting/writing, and when they are finished with math (or waiting for a free tablet to do Khan Academy), they have free time until around 10:30 (however long that may be).  At which point, they have snack that their parents have provided.  I let them eat and chat or play until 11.

Literature
I like to do a read-aloud with the kids most days.  We are currently reading through the stories of Winnie-the-Pooh.  I don't think you can really grow out of A.A. Milne's classic.  We've also read Robert McCloskey and Beatrix Potter.

Social Studies/Art/Science Rotation
The next part of our morning is our group learning time.  We spend this time doing our Geography studies, art, science, or a host of other things.  Here's a glimpse:
Geography
We are using Confession of a Homeschooler's curriculum Expedition Earth as our spine.  I don't use as much of her resources as I could, but rely on it for picking the next country to learn about and using some of the resources in the workbook.  We typically spend one week learning about a different country of the world.  I plan to blog here about each country we do and what we did to learn about it.

Art
I just started looking at who the famous artists and composers are in our weekly country.  We begin usually be learning more about the artist and his work.  We use biography pages (Education.com, teacherspayteachers.com and Activityvillage.co.uk often have things for us to use) or find something on YouTube or the art history channel on Khan Academy.  There are also lots of free coloring pages of famous paintings.  We recently got under our desks to "paint the Sistene chapel" upside down when we were learning about Michelangelo in Italy.

N and a friend imitating Michelangelo.

Science
I keep changing this up.  I just love Magic School Bus, and we have been watching the DVDs that I brought from the States although you sometimes can find full episodes online too.
My newest favorite thing with science though has been to find a famous scientist from the country we are learning about, and find out about him.  When we learned about Italy, we learned a lot about Galileo and his "Ball Drop Experiment" and Leonardo DaVinci's inventions.  Science often finds itself in spontaneous STEM projects too.

Reading
I have one kid learning to read and two kids who are reading/have read Lord of the Rings.  The kid learning to read has a mom who has a ton of early readers for him.  We're going through the Starfall readers with him until he's more fluent.  I know that he's also watched the Leapfrog DVDs (Letter Factory and Talking Words Factory).  My other students are working their way through Treadwell and Free Readers.  These are older readers from the previous century, but good quality literature that progresses with difficulty.  (I have omitted some of the stories for scary content).

Each kid has their own one-on-one time with me during reading time where they read aloud to me.  When they aren't with me they are supposed to read to a buddy or read independently.  With N and Z, I'm reading Story of the World with them at this time and then have them orally narrate to me since they are reading beyond grade level.  It works pretty well.

If we have time after everyone has had a chance to read to me, we clean up our class area, and the kids are free to play until their parents arrive at 12:30.

Other fun stuff...
We are blessed to have one of the dads come and do soccer with the kids every week.  He's great with them!  Another mom likes to do baking with the kids.  She's made Resurrection Rolls with them for Easter, Baklava when we were learning about Greece, and scones when we did our Beatrix Potter unit.

We've got a great little place with really amazing kids and parents.