What activities do your HE groups offer?

[sorkycake]

Just wondering . Does EO help with setting them up, advice-wise?

Hi sorkycake
I answered another post with;
My 14 year old has the chance to do sailing/kayaking/ice skating/grass sledging/swimming/rugby. We can go to a workshop on Angles, Saxons and Jutes and a trip to the theatre to see Petrushka. We can also do Crafts, Music and a Drama workshop-and all of that is just what is on offer this month!!

I have to say it wasn't always this way-when we first started home educating six years ago there was meeting in a nearby YMCA sports hall once a week and we then all went back to a home of one of the members for lunch. The group then decided occasionally to go skating or bowling. That was it in those days but slowly this evolved into regular meetings with a bit more variety-different parents took on organising different meetings.
As more people joined they came up with more to offer-one mom started organising the fortnightly swimming session at the leisure centre her family were members of. Others have started up meetings where they have seen a need -or where their children would enjoy a particular activity-hence one parent organising the sailing/kayaking activity because her children enjoy it and my organising a meeting at a local scouting centre where we do activities such as the grass sledging, climbing abseiling archery etc. In my case i did because the opportunity presented itself to organise something to attract HE teenagers up to our neck of the woods-where our teenagers are
EO didn't directly advise as far as I know but it members of EO have been encouraged to organise activities after witnessing others doing the same.
As far as I know this is how groups activities have grown in other areas, when members have been encouraged to organise something that their child would be interested in and see how many others would be interested.
It doesn't have to involve cost or commitment-the first thing i organised was to say that we were going to a local soft play centre on such and such a date and invited people to go there on the same date if they wanted to meet up. I also did the same thing at a local woodland beauty spot. there was no cost involved and when other families turned up we did it again.

I believe there is some sort of very small new group start up grant and some sort of group insurance available from EO-but I haven't needed to use either so you would need to contact Eo directly to confirm details.

Thanks for the prompt reply JNS.
I read your post on the other thread and that's what got me thinking about this.
I don't know how long the group has been going but there is scope for more activities I'd say. It's just racking the old brain to see if I can offer anything in particular, though the softplay meetup sounds like a good start I think. Or beach/park as the weather gets better.

Hi sorkycake
it is always easier to start something when the weather is better!

We often have meetings at local playgrounds or beauty spots. One family told everyone on the local list and in the newsletter that they were going to meet at such and such a place and would be walking from there to the remains of an iron age fort-did anyone else want to join them? A whole crowd of us went-I didn't know the iron age fort was even there before they mentioned it and it sparked a whole load of interest in history of that age at our house!
We have also used Birmingham Museum and Art gallery and gone to free exhibitions there as a group.
Those sort of meet ups don't require any finacial commitment-and then maybe when you have a group meeting you could see whether there was enough interest to commit to hiring a hall for meetings in the winter?

I have also organised a workshop in a local Needleworkers musuem.
I rang them up to see what educational activities they offer to schools and asked if they would do the same for HE groups. I found out how much it would be and then asked on our local list how many people would be interested as I needed ..... many people to make the trip viable.
We had a "Victorian Needlescourers" workshop that way. The children dressed up as apprentice 'needle scourers' and had a morning in the workshop reanacting the life of a poor child in Victorian times.

Many museums and manor houses/castles do that sort of educational package. I'm looking at Harvington Hall and a local Museum of Buildings at the moment.
Another mom has got another local museum offering us the same rates as local schools to do 'living history' workshops-that's where the 'Angles, Saxons and Jutes' comes in-but then there are another couple coming up as well, one on Vikings and one entitled "Fire Fire" looking at the role of firefighters from the earliest Roman times to the present day.
For the cost of £6 a child the 28 places will soon be snapped up!

Hope maybe that has given a bit more inspiration.

Thanks for the prompt reply JNS.
I read your post on the other thread and that's what got me thinking about this.
I don't know how long the group has been going but there is scope for more activities I'd say. It's just racking the old brain to see if I can offer anything in particular, though the softplay meetup sounds like a good start I think. Or beach/park as the weather gets better.

Oops! sorry don't know what happened there

Our local group meets once per week at an adventure playground, plus there are several other sessions running each week, so my dd goes each week to music, drama, swimming and skating with the group. There are also activities for older children which include a computer course, art group, duke of edinburgh award scheme and they recently had a week on an outward bound course.

As well as these regular activities there are several one off sessions, such as farm visits, museum visits, history workshops, art workshops etc etc.

It is getting to where we often have to choose between activities as there are so many now.

Oh dear, Noshoes "For the cost of £6 a child the 28 places will soon be snapped up!"
With 4 children I don't think I would be able to take part in activities costing that price too often.
In fact, that is one of the problems for me. Finding group activities that we can take part in that don't end up costing a lot that we can't keep up with.

Hi juuule
I quite agree with you-we home educated three children and there were often times when we couldn't afford for us to go to an activity. I remember in particular that we couldn't do rock climbing at a previous venue. The children have always been aware that they have to prioritise some activities because we simply couldn't afford to do everything.
But the fact is that at £6 per person the workshop places will be snapped up.

I know that where I organise a meeting locally I have managed to persuade the venue to give me a very much cheaper rate for the room-because I explained the situation that many of us find ourselves in and also locally at least we are now in the happy position of being able to offer to offer meetings at a subsidy where it is needed.
We also try and arrange a fair old number of meetings at local parks and beauty spots which cost nothing more than the price of getting there-which for us has always been a huge bite out of our budget.

and right now I am struggling to find the money to pay for three adults and two teens to go to HesFes before the tickets run out-there would be mutiny at our house if we didn't make HesFes!!

Hi Juuule

finance is always a problem with home ed Especially with 4 children, it must be hard. Our local group usually has a policy of charging per family rather than per child, so that larger families are not excluded, maybe you could have a word to see if your local group can do the same. When I have been negotiating to bring a group I always really emphasise the poverty bit, and usually manage to get quite reasonable rates.

The National Trust does education group cards for £17 per year (it might have gone up now) with which 50 people can go into any NT property free if prebooked. Maybe you could talk your local group into joining together to get a card? Or individual families can have them too. There are always free activities like walks, scavenger hunts, visits to local museums and parks etc, if you want those sort of activities, maybe you could arrange them?

We have one day per month with a local nature reserve, which is free of charge, and our group has also been successful with getting funding for over 13 year olds, so they have had some courses arranged for them - my dd will be old enough next year, so looking forward to that

If there is something the kids specifically want to do, that you can't afford, how about them raising the money themselves in some way? My dd has had toy sales on the pavement in front of our house before now when she has needed cash for something special, or she has made lavender bags to sell, or we have done a car boot sale with her etc, etc.

Thanks for that Mehetabel. Looking at all you do I think I really need to give myself a kick up the backside and get something organised myself, don't I?