Inside scoop on the produce co-op

Yesterday's bounty - have you ever seen such enormous carrots?!

I am a produce co-op newbie. A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law mentioned that there was a group of families looking for a few more families to join their produce co-op. I was intrigued, loved my trial week, and now I'm in!

We are a group of 12 women/families. Each of us is assigned to a partner. Every other Thursday, one partnership drives downtown to the Produce Terminal to buy $300 in fresh produce, bring it home, sort it into 12 boxes, and wait for everyone to pick up. Because there are 6 teams, we only have to take a turn shopping once every 12 weeks. Our typical pick up time is 11:30 am. We pay $25 cash in advance for the box.

Yesterday, it was my turn to go downtown and shop. It was really interesting. I brought my 2 year old and homeschooling 1st grader along - it was a great field trip!

The Produce Terminal is a huge parking lot surrrounded by loading docks and full of semi trucks. There were multiple produce companies there, but we always go to the same one.

Inside, there was an office, where we asked for a price list and then went outside to our mini vans to decide what we wanted. We filled out an order sheet, double-checked that we wouldn't go over our $300 spending limit, and then turned it back in to the office. Our total was $299.50.

Once the order was turned in, we had a few minutes to wait. The kids amused themselves by climbing on the rails and jumping down the ramp.

I backed up my mini-van to one of the loading docks. I think it was only about 10 minutes before the dock opened up and a team of 5 produce specialists loaded up the van with our order and gave us an invoice.

Once back at my partner's home, we had to divide all the produce into 12. It was easy with 12 heads of kale, 12 cantaloupe, 12 butternut squashes, 24 heads of red leaf lettuce, and 48 grapefruit. It was more tricky with 5 lbs of cucumber, 100 fuji apples, 18 lbs of grapes, 28 lbs of asparagus, 50 lbs of carrots (and they were enormous carrots!).... Next time, I will bring my food scale along.

I did a price breakdown for the group. Most things were a very good deal, but a few items were more expensive than what I would be normally willing to pay. Namely, the cucumbers this time - $.93/each. However, the convenience of driving up to someone's home, leaving the kids buckled in, and picking up a huge box of produce for $25 makes it all completely worth it. I usually only need to buy a few produce items at the store, and we all know that the fewer grocery store trips we make, the less we spend.

Have you ever been in a produce co-op? What tricks do you have for saving money on groceries?

Making the decision to homeschool and homeschool day 4

Homeschoolers, are you there? Did you have a hard time making a decision to homeschool? I have always admired homeschooling moms, and now that I'm on the edge of becoming one, I'm a little nervous. I'm nervous that if I take my son out of school for the rest of the school year (which was originally the plan), and then we don't like homeschooling, the school and everyone else will think I'm a flake. I'm nervous that my son won't like spending all day with me. I'm nervous that when my baby comes in April, I'll be so tired and grouchy that homeschool will fall by the wayside.

Ok, writing those down is helpful. Now my rebuttals. I don't know if I really care if people think I'm a flake. I think that the school will respect me for trying to do what I think is best for my son. I'm pretty sure that my son will love homeschool, and I think that when the baby comes in April, it will be ok to dial things back a bit and re-focus. It may be nice to have him around to play with my 2 year old (he adores her).

Scott's main complaints about school are that he is bored, he is not learning anything new, and that the other kids don't listen to the teacher and he loses out on recess time while the teacher waits for other kids to settle down. He also mentioned (to the pediatrician) that the other 1st grade boys who are not in his class make fun of him because he is friends with a girl. He is a high level reader and is an excellent speller, and he's been writing and illustrating his own stories for years. He is a doer and a mover and does not like sitting in a desk all day.

This morning, I really felt like it would be best for Scott to go back to school next week. This doesn't mean I'm giving up the idea of homeschool, but it means that I have some questions to ask the school as I explore the best options for him.

• How does one go about skipping a grade at school? Would it be possible for him to start 3rd grade in the fall (or move into 2nd grade now)?
• Is it possible that he could enter the dual language immersion Spanish program in 2nd grade? I was told there would be openings in 2nd grade, but only for someone who can already speak some Spanish.
• If he is un-enrolled, is there an "earliest return date" that he can come back to school? 

To be honest, I need to ask myself some questions, too.

• Are you ready to commit to a more regular daytime and night-time schedule? 
• Are you willing to have 2 children with you all day?
• Are you willing to commit the time and energy to planning and running homeschool?
• What will Elizabeth (age 2) do while Scott is doing homeschool?
• What is the worst case scenario for homeschool? What is the best case scenario?
• What do you want?

Many things to think about. Here is what we did today for homeschool:

Devotional (and reading/writing)
Sing
Read part of the Sunday School lesson for this week
Review memory work on 1 Nephi 3:7
Write out 1 Nephi 3:7 by memory, then correct it against the scriptures

Math
Practice addition and subtraction with online flash cards
Practice general math playing Junk Pile at http://www.sumdog.com/game/play/ (I love this game!)

Geography
Review the names of the states playing hangman (I didn't plan this, but Scott found it and wanted to do it)

Individual reading and free play
(Is this something I need to document? I think it's just a part of every day.)

After reviewing what we did today, I feel more confident that homeschooling would be a good thing for Scott. I feel ready with math and reading and writing and Spanish (just found a great kids website for learning Spanish!). I'd like to find a good history curriculum. I have Story of the World, volume 1, but as my husband has been reading it, he has found some serious discrepancies in the stories that are being told. I also don't like the lack of sources mentioned in the text. Maybe we can use the book as a very loose outline and use other books as reading material, as mentioned in the activity book. Any of you have a history curriculum that you love? Or other books/websites that you love and use in your homeschooling?

Homeschool Day 3

This is the first day that we got started at a reasonable time instead of halfway through the day, mostly because I was up before 7 am to do my own personal study and get dressed before the kids were up. It makes such a difference to me. 


Devotional
Sing "The First Noel"
Work on memorizing 1 Nephi 3:7 using the seminary scripture mastery website

History
Taking turns reading aloud the first section of Story of the World, Volume 1
Dig out some of our family history (mom and dad journals, grandma and grandpa journals)

Math
Play Fribbit for addition and subtraction
Play Diffy  for more subtraction
 
The boys also cleaned their bedroom (including the closet), their bathroom, and the upstairs library, so that I could take them to Fiesta Texas for the afternoon before our passes expire. It was a fine day.

Homeschool Day 2

Devotional: Sing "Joy to the World"

Math:
Learn about base 10 with Dad and the odometer
Practice with base blocks and base block addition at http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/topic_t_1.html

Language Arts:
Dictation and reading from The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs

Art:
Finish painting the comet rock
Paint a pig rock

Spanish:
Watch Destinos, lesson 1
Practice Vocabulario: La familia
Take the Family Quizzes at http://www.quiz-tree.com/Spanish_Language_main.html

Computer/writing:
Scott worked on his blog and wrote 2 new posts.  He practiced inserting photos, video, and links.

Our history book arrived today, so we'll be starting that tomorrow, too, although tomorrow afternoon, I've promised to take the boys to Six Flags before our season passes expire. We'll see how the day goes.

Homeschool Day 1

I have a son in Grade 1 who has been asking since the beginning of the school year if we could do homeschool. He is in a great public school, we like his teacher and the principal, and he is doing well, so I have been a little surprised by the consistency of his requests for homeschool.

My husband and I decided that before making an official decision, we should do a trial run while he is out of school this week on Christmas vacation. I also wanted to keep a record of the things we do, and I will be doing that here (amongst the recipes, home improvement projects, and gardening attempts). I have always admired homeschooling families, but until recently felt like it was not something that I wanted to do. I really value time to myself and am very happy with the public schools in our area, so it wasn't terribly appealing to me. However, over the past few months, my heart has been changing, and I felt like it was something I should consider for Scott.

My intention for this week is to ease into things. Somethings we will do every day, and some we won't. Besides what we have done today, I also want to do history (and I intend to use the Story of the World), Spanish, French, piano, violin, science, cooking, and lifeskills (planning meals, doing laundry, cleaning, car maintenance, etc). My husband will likely supplement occasionally with computer programming, and he can help with the Spanish by providing a native accent. He speaks only Spanish to our 2 year old daughter (which only started about 10 days ago), and it is really helping the rest of us, too. I have previously taught college-level French and worked as a French camp counselor for kids. I currently teach Suzuki violin, so I feel pretty confident in those areas.

I am a complete newbie, am still making decisions on curriculum, and am keeping this record mostly for myself. However, I welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions, especially if you are a homeschooler or a homeschool alumnus.


Devotional:
Sing all 7 verses of "How Firm a Foundation" as requested by Scott. It's his favorite hymn. For our scripture study, we looked up the verses that were referenced and read them together (Helaman 5:12; Isaiah 41:10; Isaiah 43:2-5)

Math
Scott did a pre-test for the first unit of a math workbook I picked up last weekend. It gave me a sense of what we can work on together. He can do simple math facts, but he does not know how to add large numbers together. For example, 25 + 37. He got the right answer, but when I asked him how he did it, he just wiggled his fingers at me. Ok, then. It's good to have something to work on:)

Language Arts
Scott loves pigs. One of his Christmas gifts was a hardcover book called The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs. We started with a one paragraph dictation from the beginning of the book. Scott did quite well. He is an excellent speller and only made a few small mistakes, mostly related to commas and random capital letters. After correcting the paragraph together, we took turns reading from the book out loud.


P.E.
It was a sunny, crisp day, and I could tell that it was time for some ACTION. We bundled up Scott and baby sister into hats, gloves, and coats, and headed out for a walk. We took several laps around the nearby high school track, and Scott also tested the longjump pits and ran up and down the bleachers.

Art
Scott loves all things art related. Another of his Christmas gifts was a rock-painting kit, so he spent some time this afternoon priming and painting one of his rocks.