Charlotte Mason Co-op Interest Meeting
6/10/25
Bekah Sealey, Megan Saben, Deborah (I’m sorry I didn’t catch your last name!), Katie Bailey,
Erin Dodson and Emily Turner were in attendance.
• We discussed meeting every other Friday at 1:00pm beginning 9/12/25 through 12/5/25. (8
meetings total)
• The off Fridays would be open for optional field trips, hikes, or folk dancing.
• We will meet in two terms for the year, the second term beginning in March.
• Classes would be made up of Form 1, Form 2, and Form 3 and up.
• Children not yet of school age (who aren’t going to stay with their mothers) would need to be
supervised by a couple of adults who are not teaching at that time.
• To make the best use of our time we will only be offering 3 or 4 subjects at a time. At this
point we are planning on Shakespeare and Plutarch (likely to alternate terms - Shakespeare
in the fall and Plutarch in the Spring or Vice versa), Art and Handicraft (also alternating
terms), Nature Study and scouting.
• Several of us are Alveary members and the Alveary allows their lessons plans to be used in a
co-op setting with students whose families are not members as long as lesson plans are not
given to students and there is no tuition for classes.
• We discussed starting the co-op meeting with singing a hymn (maybe progressing to solfa
study and parts work) and recitation.
• We discussed the desire to have some core subjects offered (like languages or geography)
but felt it would be too difficult to navigate the details by fall given all the variables.
• Parents would be required to stay for the duration of each co-op meeting. This would not be
a drop-off situation, even if the parent is not involved in teaching a class.
• Teaching will not be required.
• We discussed other volunteer opportunities for those who don’t want to teach, whether it
was admin stuff, field trip organizing, watching young children, or making sure our space is
clean at the end of the day.
• We discussed classes being taught by co-teachers in case one needs to be absent and for
teacher training purposes.
• Families can join for the Spring term without having attended in the Fall as long as we are
not at capacity with St. John’s. Families who attended in the Fall term will be given
preference in the Spring term.
• We are hoping to be able to meet at St. John’s Lutheran church on Brambleton. They would
like to know how many people we would expect as well as how many classrooms we would
need. We are estimating 3 classrooms plus the great room for our gathering at the beginning
of our meetings. (I’m thinking now we may need a 4th room for the preschoolers/toddlers/
babies).
• We discussed requesting families give a “soft” commitment by June 30th so we can give St.
John’s a number to go on. This doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind later, we just have
to have an estimate to get started with.
• The only fees we anticipate would be supplies related to the classes your child is taking,
although we discussed giving a group donation to St. John’s for use for their facility. There
will not be a tuition charge and teachers will not be paid.
• We discussed options for more streamlined communications and threaded discussions
through a forum or other online option. Bekah is heading up further research on this.
• Field trip options we discussed: Poplar Forest, Smithfield Plantation, Hahn Gardens,
Taubman Art Museum, Frontier Culture Museum, Virginia Museum of Natural History.