CoOps and Things Like That

Just a quick update before I go and collapse myself into bed:

• We started back to our homeschooling co-op last Friday, which was very exciting for all of us. It's such fun, and such a blessing to have a change of scenery and friends each week. This year I'm going to be in Reilly's class of 1st through 3rd graders for the first semester, and then I'm the Preschool Director (notice the Big Fancy Capital Letters! WooHoo!) for the second semester. Declan is in Kindergarten all by himself, which gives me a little pang in my heart, mainly because I'm worried that they're going to have to tie him to his chair! No, I kid...he'll be fine. It's a fun time, and it's really going to be nice to do school at home on Monday, Tuesday, then have a break on Wednesday, do school on Thursday, have a break on Friday, then do school on Saturday! Plus, Troy has been getting home at around 10:30 or 11:00 on Saturday morning, so it really hardly feels like he's working at all, so it's really nice!
• Another thing that we started today is a doing a history co-op with two other families who we are really good friends with and who are using the same curriculum as we are - The Story of the World. Shelley, Julie and I decided that it would be fun to get together every other Monday and do the fun activities that go along with the reading but that are too time consuming to do just for ourselves. Today all of the kids did "cave drawings" on paper bags with pastels, made timelines of their families and then compared them to one anothers. We were going to do an "archaeological dig" in the garden, complete with roped off sections and things to find, but it's been raining and it would have been waaay too messy, so we ate dirt pudding instead, complete with gummy worms. We all had a really good time and I look forward to future co-ops with them. Next time I'll take my camera!!