Co-op Night!

For the past 10 weeks our kids have been participating in their first homeschool co-op and loving every minute of it. The classes met every Monday for two hours. There were two classes with a 20 minute recess between 1pm and 3pm. I worked in the nursery with J2 and some other kids while our oldest three took different classes. Monday was the last day of co-op and that evening we got to see what everyone was working on.

Well of course I've shared what E9 was working on here and there. This is a picture of his mousetrap car for Young Inventors 101. The assignment was to build a car out of household materials that had a certain mass and was powered by a mousetrap. E9's car won first place! It went a distance of 20 feet. He demo-ed it at co-op night and folks were impressed by its performance. He absolutely loved this class and he and Dan enjoyed working together on many of the projects.

E9's other class was Chess I- he is the rule king remembering every rule in chess to the letter and he played well too. He came in third place in the overall class chess tournament. He's looking to improve his game. He starts by playing me. I'm a good self esteem booster. He can beat me in like 5 or less moves. Sigh.

R7 took battery science- she loved it. They used the Klutz book on battery science and made tons of projects. With the class fee, she even got to take home the book. Above is the fan and the submarine she made while in class.

I thought sure when I saw the class lists that she would take a paper craft class, but R7 insisted on American Sign Language. I can't tell you what a great class this was for her! She caught on so fast and has a quite a vocabulary and really loves to sign. The class did a few songs and the teacher interviewed each of them by asking questions through signing and each child answered back. She is good! So good and so excited that we have decided to continue her ASL education. Next year R7 will get to do ASL as part of her schooling. Stay tuned for a unit study on Helen Keller for the whole family. R7 has already read the book I bought her for Christmas and really loves to hear about her. Perhaps the deaf culture will be in R7's future.

I-5 took Story and Fun first hour and the teachers picked out children's books and did activities with them. The class was small and they got to dye yarn with kool Aid, make freight cars (I-5's is the orange tanker), make fruit soup, and owl snacks. He had a great time and this teacher was wise enough not to use FIAR titles because so many families use the program- well other than Owl Moon I guess!

I-5's second hour class was Cut and Create. Each week or over a few weeks they worked on paper piecing projects. He's always been good with a pair of scissors and I think these look great! I like this one best- a pond scene

City rowhouses

Garden picture

Hey diddle diddle the cat and the guitar as I-5 would say.

A good time was had by all and they can't wait until next semester's co-op classes. The class list comes out in August I think. I'm toying with teaching a class next time. Maybe explorations in science...maybe a Redwall class...I'm thinking on it.