How to plan homeschool lessons around co-op days

A long co-op day and a short class are different things

A co-op day that runs from 9 to 2, with three classes and lunch, is a school day. Don't plan home lessons on it; there is no energy left for them. A one-hour choir class at 10 is not; you can do a full morning of home lessons around it.

A rule of thumb that works: if the co-op takes three hours or more of the day, keep the day clear of home lessons. If it's shorter, treat it as a normal home day with a gap in it.

Write this into your school week. A family with a Tuesday co-op morning teaches at home Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. That is 144 home days over 36 weeks instead of 180, and every curriculum has to fit into the smaller number. How to plan a homeschool year walks through that arithmetic.

Drop what the co-op teaches

If the co-op teaches your 10-year-old science, don't also plan a science book at home. If it teaches art, writing club and PE, that is three subjects you don't need to plan for at all.

Keep track of what the co-op covers anyway. Grades, attendance and the hours a child spends in a co-op class are part of the year's record, and a transcript for a high schooler will need the course on it.

Put co-op homework on the plan, on the day it's due

Co-op teachers set homework: a reading, a worksheet, a project for the science fair. It is easy to forget because it lives in a different place from the rest of the plan, usually an email or a class page.

Put it on the same list as the home lessons, on the day it is due, and make room for it the day before. A child with a co-op essay due Tuesday needs a lighter Monday.

Decide whether the co-op's breaks are your breaks

Co-ops close for Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break and sometimes a mid-term week. You can follow those breaks at home, so the whole family has the same week off, or keep teaching through them.

Following the breaks is simpler and usually kinder. Teaching through them is a good way to catch up if you are behind: a co-op break week with no co-op day is a five-day home week, which can recover a week of lost math in one go.

Either way, decide at the start of the year and put the breaks on your calendar before you divide up the books.

A week with a co-op, written out

Here is a fifth grader's week with a Tuesday co-op that runs 9 to 2 and teaches science and art:

• Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: math, reading, writing, history at home. Four days each.
• Tuesday: co-op. No home lessons.
• Science and art: none at home; the co-op teaches them.
• Monday: a lighter afternoon, because the co-op reading is due Tuesday.

With four home math days and a book like Saxon 6/5 that needs about 155, the year is short by about 11 days. That is the kind of thing worth knowing in August. The answer might be a fifth math day on co-op break weeks, which here are home weeks.

When the co-op uses CircleUp

CircleUp Planner works for any homeschool family, co-op or not. Leave the co-op day out of your school days, or add it as a day off, and the plan works around it.

If your co-op runs on CircleUp, more of this happens by itself. Your child's co-op class days come into the plan. A day of three hours or more of co-op classes is kept clear of home lessons and a shorter class day stays a school day, and you can change that rule to keep every class day clear or none of them. You choose whether the co-op's breaks are home days off. Co-op homework appears on the day it is due, next to the home lessons; your child ticks it off there and the teacher sees it as done. The co-op's grades and attendance land in your records and transcript.

Whatever you use, start with the co-op calendar. Put its days and its breaks on yours before you plan a single lesson.