Art Co-op 2012-2013

Our art co-op this year has changed a little bit.  Last year one of the families in our art co-op had a daughter in pre-K who went to Kindergarten in the public school this year.  So, that family no longer is part of our art co-op.  But, my friend who we still do art with knew of a family that would be homeschooling again this year after last year's public school experience.  And, there are a a couple of wonderful things about this new arrangement: there are two boys in the new family (yay! Andrew and Adam are not the only boys!), and the mom is an artist (yay! No more craft days, and much more true art instruction)!

Because one of the moms is an artist and feels comfortable teaching art all the time, we decided to change things up so we wouldn't be rotating the art instruction.  But, in order to make it a co-op, the other mom and I needed to help out in some way.  So, we decided to add a couple of subjects to our art co-op: cooking and music.  Now, we call it, simply, Specials.

After our first two meetings, I came home rather disappointed.  I guess I had different expectations.  And, being the "look at the big picture, find the things that are wrong, and fix them" kind of person that I am, I analyzed the last two weeks and my feelings about them and tried to figure out why I was feeling that way.  After talking to Jon on Tuesday, I figured out that I was just expecting too much of me and I was disappointed because it wasn't what I thought it would be.

I am privileged to teach music. The first two weeks we talked about the orchestra and listened to Peter & the Wolf.  Plus, I tried to teach a song for everyone to sing.  All in about 20 minutes.  Yeah, not my best plan of attack.  It just turned out to be too much, and I was really getting stressed out.  This last Tuesday, after I talked to Jon about it, I finally came up with a plan: just one thing at a time. 

I really want to teach some songs to the children, but it was just too much to do in one 20 minute sitting to do both a lesson and a song.  So, on Tuesday night I decided to teach rhythm at our next co-op, and forget about teaching the song.  We were really getting no where with the song anyway.

So, after yesterday's co-op, I finally know that I wasn't really liking the co-op situation all because of me.  I wasn't liking my idea and plan, and I now know how to fix it.  I was so pleased with yesterday's co-op.  By far, my favorite.  I think that's because I was finally more relaxed with my expectations for myself and actually enjoyed teaching the children about rhythm.  

Anyway, all of these pictures I took briefly while my friend was teaching the cooking portion of "specials."  Which is why there aren't any pictures of the music portion of "specials:" because I was teaching it!  At any rate, I am more excited to plan lessons and teach songs occasionally ... and I hope that it will continue to be a co-op that both my children I love!