Operation Co-Op

The biggest home schooling worry I hear voiced is the "what-about-their-socialization?" concern. Truth be told, proper socialization is not something that concerns me much (I may or may not go into further detail on this in a later post), but this question serves as a good reminder for me to make sure that we're either getting out of the house occasionally or are having others over. To help with this, we meet regularly with a couple of other home school families for a co-op-type setting. It gives the moms a chance to catch up and encourage one another; the kids get lots of play-time with friends; and by including instructional/educational content and/or activities, we have yet another learning style at our fingertips. Really, I think it's one of the best things ever!

The first time we met, we put together a science day with several experiments for the kids to try. Our theme for the day was seeing God's design through science. We dumped ice cubes in water to see if they floated or sank; we did the soap-and-pepper experiment; and we hypothesized and tested the end results of cooling and heating chocolate chips (tasting as we went along, of course!!). Lastly, each child brought something from home and shared with the group why it reminded him of God's creation. We had lots of laughs and managed to get lots of water and chocolate on the dining table - always a clear sign of time well-spent. :)

Our next meeting was to prepare Christmas boxes for Operation Christmas Child. This was the first time that my kids and I had participated in this kind of project, and it was really good for us. All the families helped by contributing various items. Our goal for this was to help the children understand that Christmas is much more than simply receiving gifts on December 25th. The hosting mom also prepared the kids by reading a Christmas story about giving before we began. I have to admit, those were probably some of the most-stuffed Christmas Child boxes that the organization received!

Most recently, we did a nativity re-enactment. We used stuffed animals for sheep and donkeys, towels for the shepherds' headdresses, and very convincing shredded gift packing for the hay. One of the moms supplied a preschool-appropriate narration that we followed, and the kids did a great job of transforming from one character to another since we didn't have quite enough participants for both wisemen and shepherds. It was really neat to see how well everyone did, and to realize that the kids really knew a lot already about the story of Christ's birth. I also loved how creative we had to be in order to put everything together. Most of all, it helped to reinforce in the children's minds exactly what we are celebrating this season. My hope and prayer is that every year they will gain a deeper understanding of God's sending His Son to earth to conquer sin so that we would not have to pay the price of our transgressions.

While the focus of our co-op is mainly for the encouragement, enrichment, and education of the participants, it comes with the added benefit of social interaction as well. Whenever I get hit with the socialization concern, I quickly point to our co-op as a means of counteracting this potential "threat."

And then I get the opportunity to share what our co-op is really about. In my mind, that's a win-win situation!