Bloomingdale's co-op for homeschoolers

B.E.S.T. (Bloomingdale Educating Scholars Together)
Bloomingdale`s co-op for homeschoolers

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

We are announcing a free home school co-op that has been formed in Bloomingdale. While the purpose of home education is to allow households to provide for the education of their own children, we want to supplement this by taking advantage of the professional specializations that each adult care-giver has to offer.

The purpose will be to provide collaborative support for adult participants who are seeking to explore various homeschooling options, curriculum, etc. Of course, social interaction for the children will be a positive benefit as well.

1) Adults from each participating household provide a minimum of 1 workshop or field trip relevant to their expertise per semester. Current areas of expertise and sample workshop themes include:

· Journalism (scholars could develop neighborhood newspaper)
· Biology (science labs, specimen collections)
· Political Science (field trips related to history and civics)
· Writing (sentence structure and penmanship)
· Cooking (cooking demonstrations and baking)
· Music (hand-chime choir, vocal chorus)
· French (language and culture)
· Physical education (bocce, croquet, track and field)

2) Participating EDUCATORS must be the parent/primary guardian and primary educator of one of the scholars and meet one of the following qualifications:

a) a bachelor`s degree plus three years` work experience in a professional field
b) an advanced post-baccalaureate degree

3) Participating SCHOLARS must meet the following qualifications:

a) 3 years old and up (younger siblings with adult supervision may accompany scholars)
b) only receiving education at home (i.e. - not enrolled in another school or daycare)
c) accompanied by at least 1 parent/primary guardian on field trips or at workshops
d) resident of D.C. – primary consideration given to residents of Bloomingdale (additional slots may be filled by young scholars from surrounding neighborhoods)

TO REGISTER FOR THE 2011-2012 SCHOOL YEAR, EMAIL US AT: dchomeschool@gmail.com