Summer Fun! (and co-op planning)

I mentioned that our co-op moms met together (all 3 of us now that Angela has moved away ~ boo hoo!) and planned out the writing portion of our co-op for this coming year. Our kids also had a chance to swim and play together - which they dearly loved!





This is a short video showing each of the children on the slip 'n slide. It will put a smile on your face!!




As the children played, us moms were able to: schedule out the entire year, which weeks we would be meeting, schedule which lesson of our writing curriculum would be taught each week, and schedule who was teaching which lessons. I feel so good about what we accomplished!


This year we will be using another IEW product called "Student Intensive Continuation Course - B", or SICC-B for short (just like "sick-b"). It picks up where our writing class left off last year, and will be a rigorous class for our older children. Each week there will be a dvd lesson taught by Andrew Pudewa, and then the writing teacher will help the students begin outlining and practicing the new "dress ups" and "decorations" prior to their homework assignment.

Since all 3 families are using Tapestry of Grace (though not the same year plan), we each plan to substitute the content of the homework assignments with topics from our history studies, which means the moms will grade their own children's work rather than the writing teacher doing it. We also have to adjust SICC-B down considerably for our younger writers which will require another gab session, oops! I mean planning meeting. ;-) But we got a lot decided!

As an aside, doing SICC-B along with a grammar program (such as IEW's Fix-It which our family will be using) and literature discussion (which is included in Tapestry of Grace's program) counts as 1 English credit. So at the end of this school year, our daughter G will have earned her first "official" high school credit!

Our younger children, who did the young 5's alphabet class last year, will be working through several books from Five In a Row, Volume 1 (more on that later). We will essentially have 3 groups, 2 writing groups and the Five in a Row class, and just 3 moms. So Friday mornings are going to be busy! But we are very excited for our upcoming year and are thankful for likeminded families and good friends to learn with!