Charlotte Mason Homeschool Co-op Lite

Being able to homeschool in community has been something I’ve been overwhelmingly thankful for at various stages of our homeschooling journey. Over the years, we’ve been part of a large, very structured and organized Charlotte Mason homeschool co-op with moms teaching specific subjects to all the kids, which I wrote about a few years ago. After that ended, we were on our own for school subjects, but we joined a group that met in parks a few times a month to socialize.

Both groups had their advantages and disadvantages, but in recent years, I discovered they were not the only options! In this post, I’m sharing the “lite” version of a homeschool co-op we’ve been part of for the past year, and how this happy hybrid has been just right for us.

How it Began

This group actually began as a hiking/nature study group between two homeschooling moms who had known each other for several years. They decided to meet weekly for an afternoon hike and nature journaling to hold each other and their kids accountable for this part of a Charlotte Mason education that often gets skipped over.

After they had been meeting for a few months, a chance encounter at a local Charlotte Mason book group the three of us attended led them to invite my kids and me to join their weekly excursion. Admittedly, I was hesitant at first. When I was told it was weekly, that felt like a lot, especially since the most we had met with any of our other homeschool groups was once every other week. I wasn’t sure I could commit to something that often.

On the other hand, however, we were at a kind of turning point in our homeschool community experience. I had spent the previous seven years driving an average of 45 minutes or more down to Colorado Springs to participate in the other groups we were part of. While I love that area of Colorado, and have zero regrets about our time with our friends down there, the time we had to spend in the car just to get to one event was eating up more of our schedule than I liked. There were several women in the group who have become very good friends, and I am so thankful for that. But because it was a more casual group, we never knew which families we would see, and the kids my kids had connected with sometimes didn’t go when we did. Between that, the distance between our homes, and busy schedules, maintaining those friendships for my kids had always been challenging.

At the same time, another family, whom we had grown very close to over the previous two years and had done many things with, was getting ready to move across the country, so we would be losing an enormous part of our community when they left. I was honestly feeling a little panicked about my kids’ (and my own!) social life as it felt like it would be minimal or non-existent once their moving truck left the state.

So, I swallowed my apprehensions and said we’d join this new group the following week. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, as I didn’t know the other moms very well and hadn’t met any of the kids. But honestly, I felt a little desperate to find more of a local community and thought this might be it, as their invitation came just as I was praying for this very thing.

And it really was an answer to prayer. We joined them at the end of August 2024 and have been meeting with them almost weekly ever since. At first, we continued with just the weekly hiking group, but have slowly been adding more activities together (and a few more families!) along the way, until it has become something of a hybrid between a full co-op and a more casual social group.

As I’ve had experience with both, this really has been the happy medium for me that is just right for our family. I don’t have the extra work (which, at times, felt like a lot) that comes with being part of a larger, more structured co-op, but we also share several subjects and other activities with some of the families in our group, so our kids have those common experiences.

Charlotte Mason Homeschool Co-op Lite

Because I’m a list-maker, I’m going to lay out the various elements of our group and how we organize and structure the things we do together. It is really very simple, and I think that’s why it works so well for us!

Weekly Hikes

The weekly hike is the heart of our group and, as I wrote above, how it all started. This, along with coming to the hikes at least a few times per month and doing nature journals during the hikes, are also the “requirements” the families who have come together to form this group have agreed to commit to.

We meet at 1:30 at a local trail or park, review our nature study lesson and goal for the week (more on that below), then hike or walk halfway through the trail (sometimes all the way) before we stop to make an entry in nature journals (the moms sometimes update their lists) for around 15 minutes. Then we continue on the hike, or return the way we came.

One of the amazing (and organized!) moms in our group created and maintains a spreadsheet for us with a row for each week of the year. She has a column for:

• the date
• the location/meeting place with a link to a Google map of that location, usually the parking lot where the trail begins
• the meeting time – this is usually the same every week, but on the weeks we meet at our assisted living facility (more on that below), we meet later for the hike, and in the summer, we meet earlier
• the goal – this comes from the Sabbath Mood Homeschool Nature Study Curriculum (we’ve gone through Level 1, Rotation A this year, and it has worked very well for us! Nicole has information about licensing in a group setting on her FAQ page)
• the lesson – this also comes from the Sabbath Mood Homeschool Nature Study Curriculum and includes a link to the video for that week’s lesson that the families watch at home before we meet for our hike (we do ours during Morning Time the day we go on our hike)
• the trail – this is a link to the specific trail we’ll be doing that week on AllTrails
• notes – for any additional information, for instance, if the location isn’t clear or if it’s a longer hike, suggestions for packing a lunch or bringing swimming gear

At least two of the families have met consistently nearly every week in this way for almost two years now. There are a few exceptions:

• When our hiking day happens five times in a month, we use the last week for a narration/game day. Usually, the organized mom in charge of the spreadsheet reserves a room at a local library, the kids bring written narrations from home, and read them to each other before spending the rest of the time playing board games together.
• We don’t normally balk at inclement weather, but there have been a few times when it’s been bitterly cold (I think the last time we did this, it was around 3℉ in the afternoon). We usually make a last-minute decision on those days and either don’t meet or gather at one of our homes for an afternoon of play.
• When most of the families can’t come due to unexpected events or illness, the remaining families decide whether they want to still meet. When life is particularly busy, it has been nice to mutually decide to take a break that week (we actually just did this last week).

For our hike locations, we try to stick to a few favorites each month so we can see how they change throughout the year. However, we will also throw in other locations at random times, especially during certain times of the year, like summer, when we can drive further away from home and do longer hikes, and autumn, when specific locations have good fall foliage.

We keep a steady pace on hikes and generally only stop to do our nature journals, so we are usually able to return to the parking lot in a decent amount of time, even on longer hikes. When we’re done at the park, nearly every week, a few of the families will visit a local ice cream parlor together (we have specific ice cream places for specific hikes), and sometimes make our way to another park where the moms sit (or walk) and chat and the kids play (this is especially nice in the summer!) for a little longer.

Subjects

While the only thing we actually do together on a weekly basis is the hike, and we don’t all use the same curriculum (we currently have a mix of A Delectable Education and AmblesideOnline), a few of the families have also chosen to line up some of our subjects. So while we don’t teach these things when we’re together, our kids are doing the same Shakespeare play, Plutarch life, hymns, and folksongs at home. We also have some overlap with our composer and artist studies, loosely based on the AmblesideOnline rotation.

To plan for this, last summer, those of us interested in participating in this aspect of the group agreed on three plays and three lives to do throughout the school year. One of the moms then chose six hymns and six folksongs (two for each term), also from the AO rotation. This schedule is open to any family that wants to use it, but it’s not required to be part of our hiking group. It’s just a fun way for our kids to do school “together,” and we sometimes find the girls singing their folksongs while we hike (On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘at has been a favorite this year).

Group Science/Handicrafts

Some of the families meet approximately once per month throughout the year for kids from various forms to do their science experiments together. The younger students are following the Sabbath Mood Homeschool Form 2 and Form 3/4 science guides at home, so those moms decided which specific science subjects they wanted their kids to do over the year. These guides generally have quite a few experiments scheduled, so they don’t do all of them together, but combine as many as they can.

For our high schoolers, most of the students participating in the group science days are doing the Novare Introductory Physics Program, which includes five experiments over the course of the year. When we meet, they do these together, guided by another one of our moms who takes copious notes and does a fantastic job of leading them through the experiments. This has been a huge benefit for us as these experiments are much better done in a group setting.

We usually meet fairly early in the morning on these days at the home of one of the families (who also generously takes coffee orders via text as we all make our way there!), with each form having a designated spot and a teacher/mom in the house to complete their experiments. When experiments are done, or for younger kids or those without an experiment scheduled that day, the grandmother of the hosting family usually has a handicraft activity planned. We’ve done things like stained-glass creations and leatherwork, and this has been a huge hit with the kids!

Assisted Living Facility

A few of the families began this tradition last year after we listened to The New Mason Jar Podcast episode that outlined this idea. One day per month, before our hike, we spend about an hour at a local assisted living facility visiting the residents. The kids recite Bible passages and poetry, then we sing folksongs and hymns together. After this, we pass out art prints to the residents, and the kids and moms sit with them while they all talk about the piece together. Originally, we were going to do a more traditional picture study session, but because this is a memory care facility, we’ve found it’s more enjoyable to just look at the art together. There have been a few occasions when we’ve had some time to ask the residents more questions about themselves after we look at the art together, and we’d like to do that more often.

Celebrations

An idea I brought over from our old groups was a time of celebration for our families together. We do this twice per year, near Christmas break, and then again when our school year is done, at the home of one of the families. The event includes food, recitations of the pieces the students learned in the previous term, a performance of a scene from our Shakespeare play, displays of handicrafts, and just having fun!

Other Activities

We are fortunate in that there are quite a few extra-curricular offerings for homeschoolers in our area, and we have intentionally planned for our kids to participate in some of them together. These include a once-per-week, hour-long homeschool PE program; a once-per-week, full-day STEM/Aerospace program; a speech and debate program that meets throughout the month and offers competitions year-round; and local sports programs.

And very randomly, last summer, several of us, along with some of our kids, also drove west in the wee hours of the morning to hike Mount Sherman, one of Colorado’s peaks over 14,000 feet in elevation. It was an awesome experience, and we plan to repeat it this summer at a different location!

Things for Moms

Because Charlotte Mason suggested that, “If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children…, we should have happier households,” we have taken her advice to “Let the mother go out to play!”

We started these traditions by forming our own little book group. Each mom takes a turn picking out three book titles; then the group chooses one, and we spend a few months reading that book together. Spontaneous discussions come up during hikes, and we have even planned a moms’ night out where we watched the movie version of the book after we had all read it.

We also visit local large, semi-annual book sales in our area. This actually includes our extended Charlotte Mason homeschooling family network, and we have been known to call across the book-sale room to each other when we find a book we know the other will need for a specific year or that they’ve been looking for. I used to really not enjoy going to book sales on my own, but this has become so much more enjoyable with friends!

The trips to the book sales could also fall under the category of moms’ nights out, as we usually get a meal before or after (sometimes both) the visit to the sale, but we also periodically do this outside of book sales as well. Usually, we get dinner together, go for a walk, get ice cream or coffee, and/or visit a bookstore afterward (of course).

And that is our happy hybrid homeschool group as it stands! We’ve bounced around ideas for other things to share, like book discussions for the kids, but for now, this system is just about right.