Starting a Coop

[heartofjoy]

My homeschool group is starting a coop. It's going to run 9 weeks this fall and then maybe then again in the spring. We'll meet 3 hours on Wednesday afternoons. Each child will sign up for 3 1-hour classes. The moms will sign up to help in 2 classes and have an hour free. So far we are offering public speaking, art, pe, legos, spanish, and prechool/nursery. There are 6 of us on the planning committee and we mostly have all the slots filled with a primary teacher, but we'd like at least one more adult in every class. In order to do that we need at least 6 more families. Our homeschool group only has about 20 familes, so we're not huge, but I am hoping many of them will be interested. We also have mostly middle-aged kids in our group with a smattering of younger ones.

Has anyone started a coop before? Or been in one? I've never even been in a coop much less start one. The lady who's taken charge of it has done one before and we are following her lead with this. I am on the planning committee though, and I'd like some ideas. Is there anything you can think of that will help our coop run better? Organization tips, general how-to-run tips, forms/registration? I'm not sure how formal to make things if we all pretty much know each other. Then again, I want it to be pretty organized so that we can concentrate on having fun instead of hashing out logistical problems.

[allycat]

We started a small co-op at our church with 3 families and 12 kids between us. It was small, but nice. We are doing 2 hours this year: 1 hour class, and 1 hour social activities. We are doing the ocean for 6 weeks for our first unit. We are having 4 families this year, so about 1 time teaching and then a few people double up. We are doing a couple field trips too. We have a planning meeting with just the planning people, and then we have a group discussion to go over the times and details with everyone and get imput. We are going to have one person teaching each week and then the rest of the moms can help with little kids. We have 6 little kids. We used to go to a bigger coop, and the teaching got overwhelming, as well as not having much time with the other moms to talk. Also, the other group was more adapted for older kids, and nothing for nursery or toddlers, so pretty difficult with those of us with young kids. A newsletter or email newsletter is helpful for upcoming events with a large group. We are pretty relaxed with our co-op and I like it that way.