Hi. I just started to homeschool my son this fall. I don't know how a coop works, but thought I would mention a couple other options that I do happen to know a little about.
I send my son part time to our local public school for 1.5 hours a day, and we are new members of a local homeschool group. My son is extremely extroverted, and I tend towards introvert, so this works to get him out with other kids while I get my alone time. As the year is progressing we are getting involved in enough activities that I would be tempted to drop the public school, except I don't know another way to get my time alone.
So he does homeschool every morning and public school every afternoon. During the hour and a half he is at school he has science and either PE, Art, Music, or Library. He takes the bus home, except on the day he stays after school for Chess club. Outside of PS he studies French one hour a week with a tutor, he is in swim lessons one day a week, and this week he starts fall Little League with games/practice 1 - 3 times a week. Plus we like to take homeschool classes at the science museum one or two mornings a month, and have participated in a homeschool project with the Game & Fish dept. Our local homeschool group has Friday afternoon park days every other week, preceded by either an hour of board games or a book club. Park day unfortunately conflicts with public school for us, but we can participate in games/book club beforehand.
The best sources of info I have found have been Yahoo! groups. I even found a local Yahoo group for gifted homeschoolers! I'm in a bigger city, so that helps, but perhaps an area large enough to support a homeschool coop would have some of these other resources as well.
Without a whole lot of experience yet I feel that activities with other homeschool families are great for gifted kids because the variety of ages allows kids to naturally form friendships with true peers and age differences are not (as much) an issue.
Last edited by MAE; 10/05/09 02:20 PM. Reason: grammer
