Co-op Wednesday

Wednesdays are co-op days at our house.  This is the second year for my own personal AAHE Cooperative and I am so proud of the way it has turned out.  Last year we did Fifty Nifty United States.  This year we are doing Artists and Composers.  Each week a two moms have teaching duties.  We have two age groups of 12 kids each for these topics....the older class is age 8 to 10 and the younger class is age 5 to 7.  From 9:25 until 10:25 the older kids learn about an artist and the younger class learns about a composer.  At 10:25 we have a 5 minute switch and break and the teacher moves to the other class and repeats her lesson, tweaked to be age appropriate.  Today the kids learned about Mary Cassatt with Wendy T. and they did Tempera Monoprints.  http://homeschoolblogger.com/melissal89/506477/   Wendy read the kids a book then they started the project, allowing the kids who weren't having a turn with the art materials to draw on their own.  They turned out great!  For music, Leslie L. taught the kids about Beethoven.  They learned all about his life, listened to his 5th symphony, making tally marks for the times they heard the part of the music that they all recognized and made ear trumpets to help them hear things like Beethoven had to do.  It was another fun day for the kids and the parents all pitched in, as usual, for set up and clean up.  Parents of the younger kids have formed together to make a preschool class and another mom who specializes in Handwriting Without Tears also teaches a short class to the young ones.  It's a perfect group of a people coming together to make a perfect co-op and for this, I am very grateful!