that IS the question this morning.

In about an hour and a half, the boys and I are headed out the door to our second week of homeschool co-op.  I really had hoped it would be a good thing. I really wanted it to just be this fantastic experience for them.  I am really disappointed.

This is an affiliated First Class Homeschool Ministries co-op.  I think what they are doing nationwide is phenomenal, and the one we joined is quite good.  Most of the families are fairly new to homeschooling…. 7 years or less.  There are around 15 families and I think 23 kids Pre-k through 7th at last count.  The issue isn’t the co-op itself, but me.  I’m not comfortable with it. I didn’t get to choose any of the classes or have a say because we had a serious family issue we had to tend to out of state, and missed the planning meeting.

I signed up D1 (9, 4th grade) and D2 (7, 2nd grade)  for 3 classes together. They do offer another set of classes, but they were either too old for them, or didn’t interest them/beyond what D1 is capable of.  They ended up with choir, Oops Your Manners are Showing, and Earth Science.  I have very mixed feelings about all of them.

First, I am not teaching or co-teaching a class. This is purposeful, because I need to be able to help keep D1 on task and functioning. Most of the other moms are assisting in classes that their children are NOT in. Not me. I’m assisting in all of their classes for D1′s sake, and for the most part I feel like a 3rd, or 5th, wheel as far as the class is concerned.

Choir- They have hired a teacher who, after counting the kids last week is supposed to tell us how much we are needing to pay per student. It will be $15 or $20 per child, so double for me because I have two. And I wasn’t all that impressed. And they are starting Christmas songs, like Jingle Bells. >:-P  We wanted to join this co-op in the first place because one of the directors told me that they had this awesome guitar teacher (last year) and D1 is totally crazy about musical instruments and he HAS an acoustic guitar he loves to plink on.  So instead we have choir and jingle bells.

Manners- It starts out with a corny skit, which is okay because it gets the kids’ attention. D1 was a character in the first skit, but he wasn’t sure what to do or when to read his script and I had to prompt him through the entire thing. That’s okay, it isn’t something he can’t learn in time.  The issue here is the writing.  The teachers have the kids write down lists of things and phrases and such, and they go rather quickly. D1 isn’t able to do writing like that. He can copy a list if given plenty of time (an hour or two) and a lot of cuing.  D2 can do the writing but not at the rate that they were asking the kids to write.  I was very frustrated with this class and feel it’s a waste of time.

Science- This could be a great class, would be a great class, if we were studying Earth science at home.  Since we’re not, it’s fluff.  And mostly just “Here kids this is a cool experiment about tornadoes.  Let’s make a tornado!”  Um, okay. So we 2 moms in the room passed out and assisted all of these very young kids (D1 was- I think- the oldest and could have done this on his own, without any assistance or prompting at all, but for the noisy crowd of Under 7′s.)  This class has 16 kids in it and as I said, is quite noisy. It is just a fluffy, let’s do a fun experiment type class. Again, I feel it’s a waste of time.  I will post the rest of my thoughts separately.