Back in 1989, when we started homeschooling, co-ops were not yet a thing. In fact, homeschooling was not really a thing, so we were pretty isolated. Isolation does not feel good for anybody, not the parents and not the kids. It is a fundamental human need to feel connected to others. We filled that need by networking with a few other families in our area who had recently started homeschooling as well. Most of that networking took the  form of fieldstrips and outings of various kinds. This gave our children the chance to interact with other kids and, just as importantly, it gave us moms the opportunity to talk and not feel so alone. We enjoyed those weekly field trips and they filled an important role during our early homeschooling years. 

It was not many years into our journey that we found ourselves with a much wider age gap. I had children who were preschool and early elementary age, along with my older children who were now in junior high and beginning high school. Most of the families we had started homeschooling with also had somewhat older children. We still did occasional outings, but it just was not the same. There was a definite void in terms of connection and my younger children seemed to be getting the short end of the stick. 

When you are doing your best as a parent, doors always seem to open, and answers seem to come when they are needed. The door that opened for us was “Thursday School.” There were no families in my social group with younger children who were homeschooling. Still, in the most amazing and unexpected ways, I connected with four other families who had children in the target age group of 4-7 years old. To give you an idea of how random these connections were, one family lived in a city over the mountain a half hour east of us. I met her at a seminar I attended. Another family lived half an hour south of us and we were introduced by a mutual friend. Another family lived on the other side of our town. I met her at a school board meeting, and the fourth family conveniently moved into our neighborhood about this same time. We started talking and decided that we would have all our children get together every Thursday for school.  

We met at my house, since I was the most centrally located and had a fairly large, open space. Each mom picked a subject they wanted to teach, and we spent three or four hours each Thursday rotating between the activity-based lessons the moms had prepared. There was no structured curriculum plan. It was more of a “potluck” type of experience, but it proved to be highly successful. The kids loved the activities and loved associating with the other children. The moms thrived on the social connection. The quality of the lessons themselves proved to be outstanding. It was very motivating to prepare for that lesson each week knowing that all the other moms would be watching and that the whole group of kids would enjoy it. Perhaps it is a negative commentary on me, but I realized that I would never have put that level of preparation into a lesson for just a few of my children. 

 The benefits of Thursday School were many:  

• It filled a critical social need for connection (for both the children and the moms). 

• It provided the children with an opportunity to experience cooperating in a group setting. 

• It allowed us access to a wider variety of talents and personalities. 

• It was personally very satisfying to focus on preparing a quality lesson and then receive the positive reinforcement for a job well done. 

• It gave an increased sense of structure and predictability to our school week. 

• It gave us a weekly emotional boost that carried over to the next week. 

Although our co-op evolved over the years, it proved to be the foundation for a winning formula. In your area, perhaps there are no existing co-ops or support networks. Maybe a co-op like ours is not the solution for you. Yet, I still maintain that the same principle often holds true: do your best as a parent and doors seem to open and answers come when they are needed.