In my last post I gave an overview of our first day of co-op.

I have asked myself several questions but haven’t too many concrete answers yet.  I have homeschooled enough years that I pretty much know what I like and what works for my family, so the things I am asking myself are:

What do I want from a co-op? I’m not exactly sure. I know more about what I DON’T want than what I do. I don’t want a whole ton of kids involved. That’s okay for kid’s choir at church, but not fun for me in an educational setting. And speaking of kid’s choir, our church is preparing for their annual kid’s Christmas program, which is always a full-production musical and always VERY good. The boys haven’t joined–yet– but I think I will have them join. When the big kids were little, this production was their music class, 2 hours every Sunday evening, for 3 months. It definitely got all three of them off on a musical foot, so to speak. All 3 still enjoy singing, and G plays several musical instruments too.

What do my kids enjoy? Anything. They’re pretty easy going.  D2 doesn’t like co-op though.  They just like being able to meet new kids and do hands-on things.

What are our options besides a co-op? I don’t know that our options are as streamlined as a co-op, but we do have options. I’ve said (maybe on Twitter?) that rather than give up a school day for a fluff, play day I’d rather just hop in the van and spend one day a week doing something fun that is educational too.  Right now, since it’s fall, there are lots of activities happening up in Greenbluff, where all the farms are.  Cider pressing, apple picking, visiting the production lines at the farms, corn mazes, etc.

Then there is the zoo, the museum, the kid’s science museum, the arboretum.  The only thing is that these are all a lot more fun when we have a couple of friends to go with.  We could do a field trip a week, Choir on Sunday evenings (this kills my work schedule, or Daddy will have to make sure he gets them there, every week since I work about 3 Sunday evening shifts a month.)  Or we could pay for music lessons. D1 wants to learn guitar and piano. D2 would be game for guitar too, trouble is music lessons cost money. And going to all of these different activities each week will stress me out.

What do I want? Really, I just want what we used to have. I want to have one family we can take outings and field trips with, and co-op for science once a week.  We are using Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day, and it would be SO much fun if we had another family to do the experiments with!  That’s really all I want.  My friend Kelly, who I co-oped with for 8 years, doesn’t have younger kids and her remaining 2 high schoolers are in public school now.  So I guess I just need a friend with kids my sons’ ages.  That’s what I really want.

Now I am going to pack our lunches so that we can leave for our second week of co-op. I have a headache and I’m not looking forward to it, but I do suspect I will have a decision before today is over.