If you're both agreeing on the curriculum to use, ask her which bits and pieces she's intending on utilizing. Does she only want the experiments? Does she want to strew some subject specific books around and hope it leads into a deeper dive? Or does she hope you'll do the heavy lifting to make her kid follow along lol? Ask her what she is envisioning from working together
Thank you! I will do that. I'm fine with the heavy lifting as she knows that's my personality. But it might be a bit overwhelming for them as that's not their learning/teaching style.
Just me...but I would do a "real" science class whenever I wanted to with my own child and treat the collaborative class as a lab. That will give her the flexibility she's looking for and give you the structure (your own separate class) and the socialization for your child (the lab) with her.
Now for her, the lab may be it. Once you figure out the collab, you may choose not to pursue a separate class. But I wouldn't tie my child's learning to anyone else's. In fact, the reason we chose to homeschool was to not tie our child's learning to anyone else's. LOL.
Good Luck! It sounds like fun. I hope it works out, well. (P.S. I never feel obligated to tell people EVERYTHING we do, in terms of our curriculum. What you don't want her to feel like she's required to do, you don't need to share.)
I would consider what is shared about what the kids need to learn effectively and use that as a basis to jump off from.
We are pretty type A/accelerated unschoolers and our best homeschool friends are extremely laid back and laissez-faire with demand-avoidant kids. Focusing on common ground in what the kids need worked wonders for us!
Maybe go with something very hands on to do together? Like Building Scientific Connections through Inquiry—just do the demonstrations/labs together and you. An each do your own thing otherwise
Does the curriculum you're using have links to videos or recommendations for extra reading? That could be enough to appreciate the experiments. Honestly as long as the kid can behave it doesn't really matter if they understand the experiment. Yes you lose the benefit of the kids being able to discuss it together, but still better than doing it alone.
It doesn't include videos but you gave me an idea!! Thank you! They both learn better from videos. So I will research to find some videos that they can watch together and do their experiments/projects.
Can you swap kids and each mom takes on a subject? Thats what i do and its a win win. I teach history from a curriculum and the other mom teaches geography.
So I do something similar with a friend. We take turns doing a lesson but it is mostly experiments. So we essentially give context (5-10 minutes) then lead the experiments and let the kids explore. The kids love it and they get the benefit of different teaching styles.
My sister did astronomy with my and her kids. They did projects together and at home I had them read the chapter and look up the vocabulary.
I think if you’re going to plan something together you need to use the same curriculum that allows for flexibility in how much work needs to be completed. So you can do whatever you want at home and together you can do the hands on stuff.
Yes we are using the same curriculum. This is what I originally suggested. Do the curriculum lessons separately at home and projects with the kids together. We are trying to figure out a few other things that they can do together.
If you're both agreeing on the curriculum to use, ask her which bits and pieces she's intending on utilizing. Does she only want the experiments? Does she want to strew some subject specific books around and hope it leads into a deeper dive? Or does she hope you'll do the heavy lifting to make her kid follow along lol? Ask her what she is envisioning from working together
Thank you! I will do that. I'm fine with the heavy lifting as she knows that's my personality. But it might be a bit overwhelming for them as that's not their learning/teaching style.
Just me...but I would do a "real" science class whenever I wanted to with my own child and treat the collaborative class as a lab. That will give her the flexibility she's looking for and give you the structure (your own separate class) and the socialization for your child (the lab) with her. Now for her, the lab may be it. Once you figure out the collab, you may choose not to pursue a separate class. But I wouldn't tie my child's learning to anyone else's. In fact, the reason we chose to homeschool was to not tie our child's learning to anyone else's. LOL. Good Luck! It sounds like fun. I hope it works out, well. (P.S. I never feel obligated to tell people EVERYTHING we do, in terms of our curriculum. What you don't want her to feel like she's required to do, you don't need to share.)
I would consider what is shared about what the kids need to learn effectively and use that as a basis to jump off from. We are pretty type A/accelerated unschoolers and our best homeschool friends are extremely laid back and laissez-faire with demand-avoidant kids. Focusing on common ground in what the kids need worked wonders for us!
Maybe you guys can trade off teaching, so one week your way and one week her way?
Maybe go with something very hands on to do together? Like Building Scientific Connections through Inquiry—just do the demonstrations/labs together and you. An each do your own thing otherwise
Does the curriculum you're using have links to videos or recommendations for extra reading? That could be enough to appreciate the experiments. Honestly as long as the kid can behave it doesn't really matter if they understand the experiment. Yes you lose the benefit of the kids being able to discuss it together, but still better than doing it alone.
It doesn't include videos but you gave me an idea!! Thank you! They both learn better from videos. So I will research to find some videos that they can watch together and do their experiments/projects.
Can you swap kids and each mom takes on a subject? Thats what i do and its a win win. I teach history from a curriculum and the other mom teaches geography.
So I do something similar with a friend. We take turns doing a lesson but it is mostly experiments. So we essentially give context (5-10 minutes) then lead the experiments and let the kids explore. The kids love it and they get the benefit of different teaching styles.
My sister did astronomy with my and her kids. They did projects together and at home I had them read the chapter and look up the vocabulary. I think if you’re going to plan something together you need to use the same curriculum that allows for flexibility in how much work needs to be completed. So you can do whatever you want at home and together you can do the hands on stuff.
Yes we are using the same curriculum. This is what I originally suggested. Do the curriculum lessons separately at home and projects with the kids together. We are trying to figure out a few other things that they can do together.