SETTING UP AN EXTRACURRICULAR SMALL GROUP

Our Homeschool Support Group acts as a great connecting tool, information center, and a deep well of encouragement for homeschooling families in our church community--all by the blessings of those families who reach out to others.

 

Many times, it is beneficial for a family to form an extracurricular small group with another family or two to do subjects that lend themselves well to a small group learning environment such as a: 4H club, LegoRobotics Club, Readers Theater group, Speech group, Shakespeare club, or Nature Science club, etc.  Many times school credit is gained through these extracurricular activities.  Always fun and friends follow!

 

Our Homeschool Support Group cannot officially organize and administrate a small group for every kind of interest that may arise in our homeschool community. We simply don't have the manpower, and it would be far beyond our church-sanctioned scope and ministry intent--our focus is on promoting support resources to homeschoolers in our church community and providing an organization to sponsor a few of the larger-group type social activities or projects. However, we love helping those among us create these wonderful groups privately and then sharing their knowledge with the others in our support group family.

 

So this Extracurricular Small Group site has been created on our Support website to help those of you interested to connect and form your own small learning group around a specialized interest or activity.

 

We hope to give you good how-to-start information, a few cautions, and an armload of links to those areas that have been successful in this kind of small group setting.

 

First, a few words to the wise about organizing and setting up an Extracurricular Small Group:

BE REALISTIC...Getting the Vision:

Are you sure you need a club? What kind? Would it be better to go it alone?

Be honest with your intentions for your family and the group. If all you are really looking for is some informal social time, then just invite families over to play or be clear this is a play group with some crafts thrown in. Learning groups do provide some social fun in a constructive way, but don't burden members of a learning group with confused intentions. You and your kids will end up with work you don't want, and they will end up with a family who is not committed to the group's learning goals.

Does the subject of study or interest lend itself well to a group setting? Some subjects really do, like a Readers Theater begs for participants. However, some topics don't. Sometimes it is more efficient to just do it yourself without bringing others along or tagging along with someone else's group, especially if your children get very distracted by the social part and then forget to study the point to the academic subject.

Look at your own purpose for this subject area. Are you wanting to be able to move freely through the topic focusing on your own specific goals? Extra hands (and bodies) could be a burden rather than a help then. Also, don't assume a group setting will solve your problems if you are insecure about the topic. Often it is better to face your fears and take the time to study that subject area yourself, with God's help, rather than assuming someone else will do it all for you. (Remember they have joined the group looking for YOU to help them too!)

Limit Your Time Commitment.

Be honest. If you (or those in your group) can only handle meeting once a month, meet ONCE a month. It takes a lot of commitment to do weekly meetings, and a poorly done weekly group likely will not achieve more than a well done once or twice a month group. Also how long do you plan for the group to meet? Ad infinitem...or ad naseum? If you want an ongoing art appreciation club, state that. But if all you really wanted to do was take 3 months and study the works by Monet with a few art museum trips, be clear about that!

Limit Your Group Size.

Obviously none of us want to be cliquish or selfishly shun others, and some creative flexibility can produce a "more the merrier" result that you hadn't first anticipated, but be realistic about your meeting space and the subject's adaptability to the number of children involved. Some programs limit the group size (LegoRobotics' rules only allow 10 members on a team--but 4 or 5 is a much more workable number for actual mission participation). Most subjects don't adapt well to large numbers. It's not fun for a child to have only one tiny line in a Readers Theater play and then have to stand around waiting with nothing to do. Don't try to twist a subject to accomodate 15 kids when really 6 are the maximum that would work well. Thus don't be afraid to limit the number of your group. Explain up front that you only have room for "x" number of families/children...and first come/first served! If there is more interest than there is room, share your information and encourage others to start a similar group or divide your group up with others leading!

Limit Your Subject Scope.

Don't try to teach EVERYTHING about a particular subject. Be clear about what you are trying to do and what your main purpose is. Unless you have a clear set curriculum to follow, or desire the group to extend over a number of years, limit your scope about a topic. It would be better to focus on a Shakespeare circle rather than trying to cover every author in the history of British Literature especially if your time goal is a short season.

Plan for Multi-Age Activities or Limit the Ages/Ability Levels of Participating Children.

Many activities adapt well to mutli-ages; some do not. Be realistic about the skills needed for your subject. Don't assume that little ones will magically go with the flow if you are attempting to teach older children skills that require a lot of your attention and are too difficult for the younger ones. Either tell mothers you can only handle older children, or have a plan for the younger siblings with someone willing to help them with projects planned for them to do that is age appropriate. Please don't assume another mother in your group is dying to toddle after your little one while you help your older children.

Know Your Ability LImitations and Those of the Other Mothers in Your Group:

While a club is a wonderful cooperative effort of sharing skills, and a variety of approaches can bring depth to the subject and offer you a new perspective you might not have considered, be realistic with each other's skills and time. Don't expect others to magically fill in all the gaps for you, especially if you haven't taken the time to plan well. Be realistic about your own limitations. Don't try to be everything to everybody.   Often it is better to extend an invitation to those you know have similar goals with children of similar abilities and schooling styles rather than to make a blanket invitation to everyone in the community unless your club will be capable and willing to adapt to the different needs and styles and expectations.

Be Agreed...Setting the Specifics:

Set forth the group's realistic needs, goals, and expectations (see the Be Realistic section above). Make sure all in your group understand AND agree! It wouldn't hurt if someone wrote these down so you can look back on them over time.

Agree who is going to teach. If you want to teach a particular topic a certain way and merely desire to draw in others for support, be clear that is what you want. If you expect others to contribute teaching time, be clear that is what you expect. If you are joining a group and wish to participate in the teaching, be up front with that expectation.

Agree to what will be expected from each parent, each child. (Behavior, house rules, homework, etc.)

Agree to what curriculum and materials will be used.

Agree how much expense and time each family must out lay to participate.

Agree to be kind and loving towards one another in Christ (as life takes unexpected turns).

BE ORGANIZED...Doing the Planning:

Unless your group's focus is mostly social, well in advance, before your first meeting, plan and make a calendar of meeting dates for the year (or session), what's being taught, and who's teaching what. Some groups will obviously be more structured than others, but a little structure is needed or people tend to drop out because there is no apparent purpose to the meetings (which means kids often get bored).

Often, it is helpful for each child to have a notebook for your club to keep paperwork and handouts.

BE COMMITTED...Caring for each other!

Do what you say you are going to do.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (children and parents alike).

The areas below have been tried by someone in our homeschool community and reported to be fruitful for small group extracurricular activities. This part of our site will continue to grow as new groups form and share what they have done in small group settings. If you see something you like, ask around to see who has done this kind of activity within our group.

1. Readers Theater Group. Readers Theater is a production of dramatic reading from a literature excerpt or play script or Readers Theater script. Rather than being memorized and acted out on a stage with props and costumes like most plays, the participants "read" their parts from a notebook (although most have their parts fully memorized so they may look at the audience rather than their notebook) using expressive voices and some animated gestures. Costuming and staging are limited which makes this form of theater easily attainable for most groups. Parts contain both characters and narrators which allows more parts to be played (generally at least 4 to a maximum of 12 parts depending upon the script). One really great website to look for readers theater scripts and how-to information is Aaron Shepard's site. Teaching Heart is also another site which offers free scripts, generally for the younger age set. Scripts for Schools has good information, for-pay scripts (including Bible scripts), a few free scripts, and some interesting links--one of which is an online stream of an actual readers theater production, the "Three Wishes" (scroll down the home page to find it), which is helpful for those who have never seen this style of theater.

Be aware most pre-written RT scripts are secular of the folktale variety, some with a smattering of world issues thrown in, but there are many which are quite wholesome. Some groups have adapted Adventures in Odyssey stories for RT (being careful to follow Focus on the Family's production rules); a free AIO script is posted on the Whit's End website. For those with a little RT experience and some ambition, an excerpt from most any well-written, children's story can be condensed and adapted for RT-- choose those that have numerous characters with active dialogue and colorful descriptive paragraphs (for the narrator's parts). Readers Theater groups have provided a lot of fun for a number of families in our homeschool community.

2. 4H Club. 4H has been around for many years and offers a variety of interest areas to learn about. It is easy to form your own club.   You may keep your club very small drawing from your own family, or you may pull children in from other families, or even the community at large. Becoming a leader is simple.  You only have to fill out the leadership application forms, attend the leadership orientation, and then be interviewed by a 4H staff coordinator at OHSU's Extension office. 4H topic areas include sewing, arts, speech presentations, photography, leatherworks, gardening, crafts, electronics, small animals, large animals, etc., etc. The 4H office offers leaders and members project materials (at a low cost) to help teach/learn skills in the interest area. There is also a good network of club leaders who act as a resource for a new club. One perk to being a 4H group is your children can show their projects at the county fair and be judged by 4H judges. The judging system is very supportive and encouraging as each child strives to make his/her "best, better." Go to our local Washington County 4H site to get more information on this organization. Many homeschoolers in our Support Group have formed various 4H groups, so there is a lot of knowledge to draw from just in our own little community.

3. FIRST LegoRobotics and VEX Clubs. The original FIRST LegoRobotics League for upper elementary/middle school aged children is internationally recognized with chapters in just about every nation and US State. The goal of FIRST is to introduce the field of engineering to school-aged children in hopes of exciting children about the field of engineering to develop the next generation of engineers. Now there are leagues for different age levels (Junior Lego League for early elementary ages 6-9; the  LegoRobotics League for upper elementary/middle school ages 9-14; the newly formed VEX League for upper middle school/high school ages 14-18; and the FIRST Robotics League for institutional high schools). You can form a FIRST team within your family, group of friends, or neighborhood. There are local chapters and tournaments in which to compete and which allow your team, upon successful competition, to progress to state, national, and even international tournaments.

Each league level works a little differently, but generally each year a challenge is posted that your team must solve using teamwork, research, creativity, and the official league kit or materials. The kids MUST do the work themselves, so the coaches are facilitators who merely guide. Our regional FIRST chapter, ORTOP, provides free training for anyone who desires to coach a team. Team kits and registration do require an outlay of money--generally $300 to $400 for the initial kit (which can be reused from year to year) and $150 to $200 for annual registration for the LegoRobotics and VEX  leagues--the cost of which can be split between the team members and earned by fund raising events or sponsors. Because of the large outlay of money required for the FIRST Robotics League for high schoolers  ($4000 to $6000), homeschoolers generally form only Junior, LegoRobotics, and VEX  Leagues. (The VEX league was recently created to make a more easily accessible league for high schoolers; and the Junior League was recently created to bring the fun down to younger ages as the LegoRobotics League and the big Robotics High School League have been the popular mainstay for years.) Go to FIRST and ORTOP for more information. Several in our group have done this.

4. Story Writing Circle. A very easy club to form is a story writing circle. In it, one child begins a story then emails it to the next member who must add to the story. Rules are laid out regarding how much must be written, how much each person can change the story, what type of content is allowed, and how long each child has before they must pass along the story. It is a great way to encourage a reluctant writer to write. A number of older children have started these on their own.

5. Speech Club. Public speaking is generally done best in front of others (otherwise you risk someone questioning your sanity!) While speaking skills can and should be taught within the family, they only really come into play when you must use them in front of those outside your immediate family circle (as the all too familiar paralysis of the voice grabs hold and the knees begin to quake). Many homeschoolers enjoy forming a Speech Club to help their children learn the skills of public speaking in a friendly environment. A great resource to help start a Speech Club is Communicator's For Christ's speech curriculum "Beginning Public Speaking." It walks you through setting up a Speech Club and provides a meeting by meeting, concept by concept, approach. The follow up book "As I Was Saying" discusses competitive speech formats. There are also books on forming debate clubs. You may find information at NCFCA which has a local chapter in our area (generally Eastside Portland through Greg Harris' group, at RainmakersSpeech.com, you will need to register as a user to see the Rainmakers chat forum and competition calendar). Go to the NCFCA site's resources section, and it will provide a working link to Communicators For Christ where you can purchase their Beginning Public Speaking curriculum as well as many other public speaking/debate resources.

Also, our local Washington County 4H has a competitive presentation event at the county fair open to all enrolled as a 4H member. 4H also provides workshops for parents (and older 4H members) on how to teach/do presentations (usually during their spring workshop at Rock Creek.) Children can also advance to the State fair in speech presentation. The 4H presentation is modeled after the Expository with Visual Aids speech style. Many in our homeschool group have participated in the 4H presentations as well as done the Communicators for Christ curriculum.

6. History Re-Enactment Club. This can be as simple as a dress-up day with period crafts and food to an extensive re-enactment gathering (for which there are outside groups to join). Most families in our homeschool community keep on the much simpler end of things. After studying a certain time period, the kids do the research for the clothing and food and skills of that period and then use what is around the house or what can be simply bought to re-enact it. This could be from setting up a gold miner's dig in the back yard (complete with painted rocks to find and a store to buy supplies) to a medieval feast to a Victorian day complete with hand-made card crafts. This obviously can be done within a single family, but the fun multiplies when other families join in too.

Each family should study the time period (a specific time period is better than a larger more diverse span), prepare one dish to share at the potluck, dress in something of the period piece, and come with a craft to share and a little summary of what they have learned. There are a number of really helpful books to get you started, and many provide for both cooking recipes and historical information: "The Multicultural Cook Book," "Cooking Up US History," "Cooking Up World History," "The American Girls Cookbook," and the series "Exploring America through Simple Recipes." Most or all of these can be found in our local library system. Vision Forum dedicates itself to American historic books and period information and costumes (although a bit spendy). Historic libraries also often have helpful crafts and food books (Such at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Oregon City, and the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Astoria). Exodus Provisions provides a lot of historical resource books both in their new and used section (such as "The American Girls Handy Book," and the "American Boys Handy Book"). For those very dedicated, JoAnn Fabric's has period costumes in a number of their pattern books, and an internet search will provide much information for the truly dedicated re-enacter.