Outdoor Preschool Coop

[chekhovgirl]

I have an almost three year old and a 7 month old. I've been looking at preschools for him for next year, but haven't found anything that I've liked. I come from a Montessori background (mom is a M teacher, went to M through K and taught as a music/drama teacher in one for 6 years), but now that I'm home with the two boys, we can't afford to sent him to a M school without me working in some fashion, and at the same time I really want him to spend a lot of time outside and have time just to explore by himself and with other kids. There is a nature center near me that has a preschool, and they spend time outside every day, but I'm not too excited about the indoor portion. Plus, it's a bit of a drive.

For months and months I've been interested in outdoor preschools, but my mind was getting dizzy thinking about starting some kind of formal school, so, I was thinking about starting some type of preschool homeschool coop that would involve basically a lot of outdoor field trips and families would take turns organizing each week. I could do things on my own, but it would be nice to do it with others and it would also be a good motivator! We love to get outside in any weather. Then I'd probably do some other things with DS at home, Montessori style.

Any ideas of how to go about doing this? BTDT situations that might be similar, even if they were not an "outdoor" coop? I'm thinking of finding families that are interested and then we'd kind of find our way with how we would go about it, if any type of "lessons" or "structure" (I use that term loosely!) would be involved.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[annethcz]

We were involved with a homeschool preschool co-op when my kids were little. It evolved out of our LLL playgroup. So all of the families involved already knew each other.

We met once a week, and each family took a turn hosting. The person hosting came up with a theme for the day, songs, crafts, etc. and also provided the snack. At the time we had kids ranging in age from babies to 6yo. The activites were designed for the older kids, but the toddler were welcome to join in as they wanted. The 'formal' activities usually lasted for an hour or hour and a half, and then snack and free play. It worked out really well for us.

In terms of recruiting families, you could try joining local homeschool yahoo groups or your state homeschooling organization.

[water]

I did a homeschool preschool coop with a group of families a few years ago and there were both good and bad parts about it. In retrospect, I would have thought about a few things first:

I would figure out what you want first and then be very clear about your expectations up front. If you want to do some kind of structured activity and another parent is totally against any structure, or vice versa, you will have conflict. I think if you clearly state what you are looking for i.e. "I'm looking to start a weekly outdoor coop where we take turns hosting and have a time for free play and then a structured learning activity and then snack." or whatever, you will get more like-minded people off the bat and end up with fewer struggles about how it's going to be organized etc.

Also discipline. How are you going to handle it if some kid repeatedly hits other kids and takes their stuff and the mom refuses to intervene because that would be squashing his spirit? Alternatively, how are you going to handle it if your kid does some kind of age-appropriate thing like grab another kid's toy and another mom steps in to grab it back and yell at your kid before you can sprint over to deal with it? It may be good to set up some guidelines ahead of time, like each parent deals with their own kid or whatever.

Also, what about younger siblings? Can they come, will there be an alternative activity provided for them? What about older siblings? Can they come? What are the rules for them?

Snack: will you rotate providing snack? What types of food restrictions do people have? I was in one group where it turned out that the only food all families ate in common was rice. So we brought our own snacks.

[FireWithin]

I set one up, two separate times. The first didn't work well because of reasons pp mentioned. I didn't clarify how non-academic I wanted and it started going to far into lectures. Those kids ended up going into formal preschools. The second group was much, much closer to how I wanted it. The problem was that my preschooler just didn't like it. We tried for at least 8 months, before his behavior really became a problem for us. He was clearly saying it wasn't a good match for him, although I really thought we were doing cool things with cool people.

What did I learn from that? I wished I had set up a 3 month trial. So that anyone could leave after three months and problem solving without sad feelings. I felt really responsible staying and it wasn't healthy for us as a family.

[chekhovgirl]

Thanks for all of the suggestions, it's helpful. I was thinking about doing a "trial period" to see how it goes, so maybe that's what we'll start with!