Five moms in our area are using WTM next year

[dragons in the flower bed]

And I proposed the idea that we get together sometime in May to talk about it. It's because of the others that I decided to do medieval/earth & space science next year. It just seemed like too good an opportunity for the kids to have a blast, and to help me stay motivated to keep the kids progressing in the theme all year. What should we talk about?

Should I ask them to bring whatever resources they may have gathered, in May? I don't think most of them will have gathered much.

Should we schedule field trips? Medieval feast or whatnot? I definitely don't want a weekly coop, but some sort of shared experiences would be fun, maybe once a month. Any ideas?

I can be an obnoxious community event organizer and I'm always paranoid that I'm setting things up no one really wants to do, but they play along because they're good friends. So I'd love feedback on what type of shared fun would really be welcome if you were in our situation.

We'll have eight grammar schoolers and two logic stage kiddos, if that makes any difference.

[Adrianne]

On first thought, you could pick a few projects from the activity guide and work on them as a group once or twice a month. They do have some that work well for a classroom or group situation. Or maybe some group read alouds?

If I think of anything else, I will let you know.

[dragons in the flower bed]

On first thought, you could pick a few projects from the activity guide and work on them as a group once or twice a month.

Thanks for the idea.

[Adrianne]

I am quite jealous. I can't even find one other mom in my area that used WTM. I would love a small group like that! I wish you the best of luck. I would say what ever you do, keep it simple.

[Pencil Pusher]

I've got 2 neighbors here in my apt complex who hs, though not w WTM. Whenever one of us is doing something interesting & we don't mind guests, we give the others a heads-up.

So far, though, there's been no follow-through. I think it's because I'm anti-social.:leaving::smash: (Couldn't decide which smiley was more appropriate for that, & then accidentally discovered how well they go together. Ironic, I know. I promise I don't hit my neighbors, though.:D)

[Rosie_0801]

I'd suggest you all invite yourself to an SCA feast. To find your closest group, check through http://www.sca.org For a very reasonable price you'll get to eat medieval food and wear medieval clothing (ask to borrow something.) If you're lucky, the "Baron" and "Baroness" or "King" and "Queen" may hold "court." It's the Current Middle Ages, so there are people who'll try and be really authentic, those who don't try so hard, people who have topics they're really picky about and things they couldn't care less about. Obviously there are things that are SCA culture, not medieval culture, because we don't really live in the middle ages. For starters, we don't want anyone to actually die in a tournament!
Anyway, go along and ask everyone lots of questions. There's bound to be someone around who knows someone who knows the answer.
:)
Rosie (aka Pani Nawojka Opalen~ska, a 16th century Polish noblewoman)

[dragons in the flower bed]

In case anyone is lurking (or searching the archives) and wants to know what we decided, here's a copy and paste of what I just sent to the interested moms.

At our meeting, we could decide whether or not we want to . . .

- Split up a list of the books recommended by the activity guide so that each of us doesn't have to individually check to see if the library has all of them.
- Get copies of each others projected schedules or non-schedules so that we avoid requesting the same books at the same time and/or have local lesson troubleshooting help.
- Borrow each others' books (For example, I only need my historical fiction read-alouds for three weeks, so I could easily let them float around).
- See if there are any projects we might want to buy supplies in bulk to do (Nutshell kits come with supplies for six kids, and no one in the group has six kids).
- Hammer down field trips.
- Delineate website search and preview and come up with a list (ie, I will find websites on West African Kingdoms and you can tell me the really great ones on the Maya, and we'll all mail a list to each other)
- Lobby the Stanley/Uptown/OtherSide/MWP to show the 1959 movie Journey to the Center of the Earth (or a different movie).
- Split our talents for lessons. For example, if some of us have kids who love costumes and some of us have kids who love stargazing and others of us are able to retell Greek constellation myths from memory in the dark while others are able to sew, we could swap kids for a day.
- Schedule a once-a-month playdate/meeting
---- plan this to include costumes, experiments, show and tell, an art project, a craft project, a game, a movie or a presentation by older kids/parents/helpful experts from the community
---- plan these ahead of time based on our projected topic schedules or plan the next one each month at the current one
---- let the kids bring their favorite projects from the past month to set up on a table as a kind of three hour exhibit and/or ask our kids to make things to put in this monthly public-speaking-free show and tell
- Share posters. I put up a new poster in my bathroom across from the toilet once in a while so that kids have daily opportunities to study it, but it's only new and interesting for a few weeks. If anyone else is interested in strewing in this way, we could split the cost of several and pass them around.