Really. I think I'm insane. I have been racking my brain as to a way to increase our income without getting a second job, or a different job... so I thought of offering art classes to homeschoolers (yes the "someone" in the mass email I sent out was me). I thought I'd send a group email to the local homeschool association to get an idea as to whether or not anyone was interested. I did expect a couple of replies, but have gotten 15 possible students! Yes, I have actually taught art before (to at-risk youth in San Rafael as part of a high school diploma program... I also taught a course entitled "History through Art" that was fun), and it is my college major, and I think hs'd kids would make great students, but now I'm scared. I have looked at renting a classroom, which is not unreasonably priced. I have looked at supplies, project ideas, and much more, but now I need to:
1. Convince the parents that yes, I really am qualified to teach art (most of them didn't ask, but one did)
2. Come up with a plan as to times, dates, and most important/challenging, price
3. Get people to actually sign up, pay, all that fun technical stuff
4. Decide on a course outline
5. Possibly put together a portfolio of sorts so that parents can see I actually know how to do anything remotely artistic
Enough about me and my insanity though...
Tuesday - last dentist appointment for C.O. until his check-up in 6 months. We read a lot of our library books in the evening instead of doing seatwork. Not much else happened really. It was a very calm day with no evil surprises, or good surprises for that matter.
Wednesday - C.O. worked on 2 pages of math. He's telling time, doing word problems, counting by 2's, 5's and 10's, filling in missing numbers, etc. He really seems to understand it all quite well! I had the idea of letting him use my color pencils to fill in everything, and he loved it. Went much more smoothly than the week before! Then he finished a review unit in his language arts book and finished by coloring a picture of a toucan. C.J. colored in some nursery rhyme pages (love Enchanted Learning) while singing the alphabet over and over, though fairly softly.
Thursday - C.O. did a written assessment in math... 100%! He read aloud 3 Bob books, and did a lesson from Easy Lessons for Teaching Word Families. C.J. worked on a color-and-count page, and a flower coloring page, and more singing. Then I put on Fairy Tale - A True Story and the kids built strange Lego creations for about an hour and a half while I got dinner cooked, and read in my art history book.
Friday - C.J. had ballet class, and has decided that ballet is very definately her thing. She wants to be a dancer when she grows up! It's funny, C.O. has always had ideas of future professions - race car driver, train engineer, construction worker, firefighter - but C.J. has never said much until now. She is very graceful in her class, which to me is a little funny because in real life, she's always so interested in/preoccupied with other stuff that she's more on the clumsy side. Maybe it's just that in ballet class she's actually focusing on how she moves, instead of being in a hurry to get to the next thing! We took it easy the rest of the day, watched another episode of Planet Earth (Shallow Seas this time), and played Candyland and Sorry.
Saturday - I worked on cleaning out my bedroom closets for a while while the kids played Lego-Hotwheel crashing games. Then they played outside with the neighborhood kids for a couple of hours, so I caught up on some more reading (I've got finals coming up in a few weeks) while sitting under the giant willow tree in the common space out front. We had a late dinner and watched Night at the Museum, which is a great movie. The kids loved it and are now absolutely fixated on history! Both are very excited that we'll really be studying history in the fall. It was fun to see them that excited about learning!
Today: Laundry day. I am waaaay behind, so I'll have the kids help me sort the loads, put in soap, all that fun stuff. C.J. is great at folding, while C.O. always folds things into odd-shaped lumps. Other than that, I'm hoping to finish getting through the library books, as we have a bunch on hold at the library (thank you library elf for letting me know!). Not an exciting day, but hopefully a good one.
Oh, and by the way, we have decided on a science fair project - C.O. is, with the help of his dad, building an electro-magnetic crane. It's a pretty simplified design to make it easy to build and use, but I think it will turn out well.
Here's what I think, first how cool that you've got the ability to do it. Second, as a parent, if I didn't think you were quailified, and that bothered me, well I likely wouldn't sign up my kid. Personally I think you are more than quailified As for pricing, I think you need to decide on a minimum # of required students, then figure out the cost of the materials for that number and then I'd say your time & effort and expertise should be worth no less than $10/class plus the cost of materials. you should also look into "professional" art schools in the area and see how that pricing compares and adjust accordingly.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to figure out some sort of class I could offer.
good luck!
LOL, I had a feeling that "someone" was you! I'm glad you got a good response. You'll do great. :)
ReplyDeleteUm, Meesh... did you mean $100/class?
yeah- you know for each hour or so of class, so the overall course of say 10 classes would be no less than $100 plus materials. though I'd go with maybe 6 classes in one course so that it makes it easier for parents to schedule. then again I sort of freak at commitment so 6 weeks is plenty long for me to plan for with out freaking out plus it would not be as much out of pocket at once.
ReplyDeleteoops I meant no- I did mean $10 a class
ReplyDeleteCOOL!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI am so impressed, G, that you are putting together an art class. How unbelievably awesome. If you lived down here, we would SO sign up for it. If it were $10 a class, not $100. ROFL at Meeshie. ;-)