I was invited to join my friends at James Elementary for their quarterly luncheon.  I appreciate having been invited.  I enjoyed 15 years of sitting in the faculty lounge during lunch, solving the problems of the world with these women and I certainly miss the friends I grew to love and 20 minutes of mid-day adult conversation (I’m sure Franklin wishes I had more adult conversation, too).

While visiting about life with my friends, the subject of home-schooling could not be avoided.  I often feel guilty when I’m asked how our year is going.  I know that I am tremendously blessed to be at home with Emma and Caden and that our rich curriculum is the envy of many of my friends who wish for so much more than the “adopted core” and the approved “pacing guide”.

In particular, several of my friends were interested in our home-school co-op.  Until this year, I certainly had no idea what the Portales Christian Home Educators did on Friday mornings, though I knew several home-schooling mommies who were (and are) a part of the group.  I wonder if you might be curious as well.

This summer I struggled when deciding to commit to either the Clovis or the Portales co-op.  Ultimately, we decided to try the Portales co-op for the year after speaking with Julia and Sarah, the group’s coordinators.  They shared their vision of a geography focus for the year and their desire to expose the kids to various lands and cultures every week.  This was right in line with what I planned to focus on for the year for our home school.

As an unexpected bonus, Chris Harrell, a local retired educator who is as creative and musical as he is “Curious” and hands-on teamed with our group in a dynamic win-win.  Chris has begun presenting educational and creative library programs and is using our children as his program guinea pigs.  He opens our Friday morning time together with our co-op anthem and original songs that introduce the topic of the day.  He brings in manipulatives and realia, saving us moms hours of research and run-around time.

We began our year at home, studying Portales and, of course, the peanut.  From that first week we’ve taken an ever-expansive approach, moving on to Roosevelt County (and the Roosevelt Rough Riders), New Mexico (making a salt dough topographic map with each child), the Southwest (creating individual Native American hogans), the Navajo (and Samuel Tso), and on to Latin America (and Latin instruments).  Chris is good to incorporate music, science, and construction whenever he can.

The co-op encourages anyone to contribute as a guest-educator.  My mom goes to church with Ms. Julia and knows many of the kids from Sunday School and Awanas.  “Grammars”, an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, presented on The United States the week of Constitution Day.  An Aunt of one of our co-op families is originally from Brazil.  She shared a fascinating presentation of her native country during our Latin America focus.

Several of us have worked with Dr. Kathleen Donalson, a reading professor from ENMU.  Kathleen spent 2 hours with our children, teaching two mini-lessons for parents on 1) segmenting words into sound boxes for spelling support with younger readers  and 2) comprehension strategies for older readers.  She and her son Jake will return in 2 weeks to share about Africa and their mission trip last summer.

Emma has presented twice for co-op and our family presented this past week.  Emma shared a presentation she created last year on Samuel Tso, a Navajo code-talker, and prepared a lesson for the group on Ballet Folklorico.  Emma had the chance to participate in the Dual Language program K-5 in Portales and was fortunate to learn several dances with Senoras Garcia and Iturralde.  She taught the group several steps and showed the authentic dress she wore.

As we’ve moved across the Atlantic to Africa for the month of November, our family shared the fascinating facts we learned last month about large African mammals on November 1^st.  Side note – I think I learned the most about the hippopotamus.  Did you know a hippopotamus is 16 ft long and 5 ft tall?  We measured it out on our living room floor.  They’re huge!  Did you know their tusks (I didn’t even know they had tusks) are 30 inches long and their mouth is the biggest mouth of any land dwelling animal?  Did you know they can run 40 mph for sustained distances?

Our time together has been focused and academically rich, but having a multi-age group of peers has also been an unexpected and important benefit for our family.

Initially, Emma was unimpressed with co-op.  In the cluster of “regulars”, she is the oldest girl.  There is one other girl close to Emma’s age and 4 boys roughly her age but there are 15 or so children aged 5-8.  Emma was sure that, being one of the oldest, there would be nothing she would enjoy or benefit from – that co-op would be geared for the “little” kids.  No need to feel sorry for my kids, but I’m one of those, “get your big girl panties on” kinds of moms.  I gave her a “we’re going to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem” speech and encouraged her to find a way, be it attitudinally or other-wise, to make her co-op experience everything she wanted it to be.

I’ve been pleased to watch her participate more as she’s become more comfortable with the group, but I also think she’s found that many of the other kids, particularly those younger than herself, are bright, curious, and knowledgeable about many, many topics.  I love that she’s learned a thing or two from the younger kids including her little brother during our time at home.  Our co-op experience (and home-schooling in general) has given Emma a better understanding that one’s age is not something to be prideful about.  Wisdom is certainly no discriminator of age.  There’s room at co-op, and in life in general, for everyone to have the opportunity to be the “smarty-pants” and more importantly, the wise counsel.

If you home-school in Portales and aren’t a part of the Portales Christian Home Educators, or you’re curious and are a “smarty pants” in a particular area and you’d like to share your talents with a group of 20 curious kids, message me on Facebook and come join the fun!