Charlotte Mason view of Tutorial and Co-ops

I have led a CM co-op for the past 5 years. It’s been a tremendous blessing to our family. The deciding questions for me would be, “does this help me reach my goals? Does this add to my burden or help me bear my burden?”

Hth, Christie

Eta – our co-op is focused on ages 6+. We do have a 3-5 year old class for siblings and it is well done, but I don’t accept families with only preschool age kids.

Does it lighten your burden by offering something you would like to offer, but would appreciate doing with others or having another mom teach? Or is it just extra costing you a day or half day for things that wouldn’t make your personal planning list? Do you have a goal of enrichment opportunities? Making friends? Academics? Does this group help meet some or any of these goals? Do you have the time to give consistently each week?

I was a part of an eclectic co-op for a few years before starting River City Homeschool Adventures with a CM flavor. As the years have passed RCHA has become a fully CM style group, some members still school eclectically, but all that RCHA offers is cm in nature. You can see what we offer at http://www.rchajax.com. Our group is rather large with 25 families and 65 kids and I don’t recommend starting that way. We have field trips, park days, mom’s night, book club, and 3x monthly co-op classes. Our curriculum for next year is artist study, composer study, poet study, hymn and folk song study, nature study, conversational Spanish, Middle East geography, pe, and one elective per age group. This is a lot, I know. Start small and pray through the process.

A ideal way is to find some interested families and begin studying charlotte’s books together and having play days or occasional field trips. As you grow more comfortable with charlotte’s methods, perhaps plan a small group day with subjects you agree on.

Many cm groups have 5-10 families with each parent taking one topic to teach to the group. Check out http://www.charlottemasoninthebluegrass.weebly.com for some more ideas. This group is similar in some ways to mine. Also check out the Truth, Beauty, Goodness group via the Sage Parnassus blog. it is a small group of families that meets bi-weekly. These will help you to see how others do it as well.

I hope that is helpful.

Christie

For what it’s worth, we joined a co-op this year that is mostly classical, while we are firmly in the CM fields. Overall it’s been a positive experience for us, although I do miss having that extra day with them. They enjoy meeting new friends and learning from different teachers. My younger ones get to have PE class with 15+ kids which they adore. My older boys are taking an art class from a talented artist. They have various other classes that I might not have chosen, but we didn’t have options as it’s a ‘this class is the only one offered’ type thing. We pick and choose which homework assignments we do and the teachers (moms) are all VERY clear that homework is totally optional so the pressure hasn’t been ‘do it our way you CM rejects’. 

This semester I was asked to teach an art class for the 9-11 year olds. I have been doing a Fine Arts CM class and we’re doing poetry, artist and composer study, hymns, etc. Not what they had in mind (I did get permission first) but the organizers and participants are loving it and want to do it again next year.

So, I guess the purpose of this post is to say that sometimes a co-op will work even if it doesn’t mesh with your philosophy. It just depends on the people there and the classes and your individual experience.