September 12, 2011 - Mini-Co-Op

Last year my sister & I got together a couple of times a month to do a mini-co-op with just the two of us. We focused on art and music. We did an appreciation course for both as well as learned about composers and artists and even did practical art study using videos.

This year we decided to cover the US States and Presidents. Today was our first day. We did an abbreviated study today as I had also inadvertently scheduled a "Not-Back-To-School" picnic for any area homeschoolers and needed to be there at noon.

We were able to cover one state and one president - rather quickly, however. I am teaching the presidents and my sister is teaching the states.

 For our study of George Washington we began with a video on YouTube (one of my favorite educational sites). We watched Part 1 which was about nine minutes. I didn't think the kids would sit through all 30 minutes, although, if we had time, we probably would have attempted it. Here is the link to Part 1.

I then handed out coloring sheets. Granted, this isn't one of their favorite things to do - especially my teenager - but we find it's good to have their hands occupied while they are being read to. While they colored I read two chapters from George Washington's World by Genevieve Foster (what a treasure this book is!!!). I also read a book called George Did It by Suzanne Tripp Jurmain. It was a fun look at all Washington accomplished in his life.

We ended the presidential time by creating notebook pages. I handed out a one-page informational sheet on George Washington. (I received a free download of all the pages, but I did find them on-line as well from the same site I downloaded from. You can see them HERE.) I then have a half sheet of paper printed with primary lines (I can't find where I got these from originally). It includes a short amount of data such as name, born/died, date served in office, etc. There are eight things included - just enough info for the boys to not balk too much at including. I also found a set of presidential portraits (clipart) and print out enough so that each boy can paste one on each page.

After a very short break, we then began learning about Delaware.

• Read about Delaware from the book Don't Know Much About the 50 States by Kenneth C. Davis
• Shared a large map of Delaware and allowed the boys to just check it out
• Read about Delaware in Scholastic Atlas of the 50 States by David Rubel
• Handed out an informational sheet about the state and completed two notebooking pages
• Handed out a packet of information on mapping skills using Delaware - questions answered
• Filled in a blank-line map of Delaware - just the important spots
• Tasted "Delaware Applesauce Cookies" (YUMMY!)

My sister has a great book with cookie recipes for each state. Our goal is to actually have the boys help make them, but this week - due to our time constraint - my sister made them ahead of time and we just sampled them. They were very good!

Day #14/175 Days