Having a homeschool co-op near you can be such a blessing.

You can share the load of teaching your children and other parents who have strengths

in certain subjects that you don't have.

You can draw off of their strengths and just help each other.

You can cooperate, which is what a co-op is.

But it can also be a challenge in trying to figure out the rest of your week's work for your school

schedule. If you have co-op on one day a week, how do you figure out what to do the rest of the week?

Welcome to the Simply Charlotte Mason podcast. I'm Sonia Schaefer. Today joining me is Laura Pitney. Laura, thanks for joining us again. You've had a lot of experience with co-ops. Yes, ma'am. And you helped us a lot with our own co-op material, the Charlotte Mason Together series, let's talk about how we balance a co-op one

day a week and what we're doing the other days of the week for our own school work.

Yeah, definitely.

That's a tricky balance, but one of the first things to figure out would be what's the purpose of your co-op?

Is it to get the full curriculum done in one day with the other families, or is it just maybe

the enrichments or compliments to your main homeschool? So how would you define all or nothing

kind of thing? Well, it seems like the first thing you got to do is see which subjects are being taught.

Absolutely. And as you said, some of them might be one and done.

For example, if you do nature study there, you probably you can check that one off.

Right. You don't necessarily have to do it at home, but you might, if something pops up during the week,

you have the freedom to enjoy that time.

Absolutely.

But then there are other subjects that you're only covering a component of that particular

study in the group setting. For example, picture study, they might show the

picture and we're going to discuss it, or they might read the biography and discuss it and narrate it,

...