We have a homeschool group that gets together twice a month for the kids to have some gym time at a local YMCA. We are discussing forming a coop. If you belong to one, can you tell me how it works? Thanks.

I've been part of several co-ops, even organized one and am now helping a friend organize one that I'm involved with. Let me see if I can help.

First, you want to get a feel for how many people are committed to being part of one and how many would be interested if it worked with them.

Locations can be a big obsticle, so try to get one before moving too far. If you attend church, that is a good place to start. I've found it is nice to have a big building with enclosed playground, a gym and several individual rooms.

Now, you need to pick a time and day and length of session. At this point in the year, I would be planning for the fall. Most people already have the rest of this year booked up. Co-op that last 8 weeks seem to be perfect. I've found Tues and Thursday afternoons are pretty good.

Now, you need to decide, are you going to have a themed co-op or a general one. A themed one might be - we are going to study oceans for 8 weeks. These are good for a small core group. Say - 3-10 families. You can have a nursery, someone to do preschool then you can split the school age kids into appropriate age groups (k-3, 4-6, 7+ work well). You could also have the teachers rotate if they want.

I've always been involved in general co-ops. They have all offered 2 class periods of 1 hour each (its nice to have a little snack break in the middle). These are great if you have a large group - 20 -30 families. You let the teachers decide what they would like to teach and what ages they want and the max. number of students in the class and you ususally get a nice selection of classes across the age groups. You of course, need a nursery and it is nice to have some crafts or playground/gym games for the 3-4 yr olds.

You would set a deadline for the teachers to get class information to you. Often there is a 1 -2 dollar fee for the class (copies, art supplies) or a short list of materials each student needs. Then you have a sign up day (give teachers first pick for classes) and all the participating families can sign up for classes. At sign up, you have the folks that don't want to teach sign up to be helpers. I feel it works best for the organizer to assign helpers to each class and then reserve several folks to be 'hall monitors' which can be pulled in to help in case of absense or to help with cleaning up or giving an extra hand in a class.

Oh, and before you start, it is nice to write up some general rules for the co-op. If faith is important to you, you might want a statement of faith, you should have rules for participation and some type of medical release form on file for all the participants. The building you use might require some type of CYA paper signed. All these are good to have filled out at sign up time.

Large co-ops are easiest to start if you are dealing with an existing large support group.

Hope this helps

we did last year (a big one) but dropped it as it was geared towards preK-7ish...my smaller kids love dit buy my older boys were bored to tearsLOL so we do a very small co-op through our homeschool group and it they have boys/girls chorus, little flowers, scince and had civics, and geography that are over now. it was/is really great: )
for the big one, you can take a look at it here: http://www.abqhomeschool.com/they really helped lots of people and have message boards, info FT's etc. very nice...it just wasn't in our age group anymore and we belong to way too many groups: )
They did do it so you have to register and attend at least 3 activities/3 months to be a full member and see the entire board. I did like that for privacy reasons since phone #'s and kids etc are on there.
Good luck!!