Mid- Season Update January 2022

Mid-Season Update from the Chair:

Happy New Year! Welcome to home schooling in the Scottsbluff Valley in 2022! It is hard to believe that the school year is half over already!

Here is a recap of the first half of the 2021-22 school year.

In August, we had our annual kick-off picnic, followed the next week by a refreshing Refresh Conference. It was a peaceful and inspiring day, a time to rethink our homeschool priorities, collaborate on overcoming obstacles to our children’s success, and have our hearts renewed by good fellowship, encouragement and inspiration. A huge thank you to the conference team of ladies for all their hard work putting it together for us.

Our fall semester started out with a field trip at the Scottsbluff fire station, quickly followed by the start of coop classes, and a rollicking time for our 4th and 5th graders at the Flower Field 1880’s school day re-enactment. A fun time was had at the Adam’s Family Pumpkin Patch in October, and we finished up the semester with outdoor Christmas caroling at Heritage Estates. Many families have been taking turns coordinating monthly activities for their highschool students, and from the reports I hear, a good time has been had by all! These are planned to be continued the rest of the school year.

Valley Faith Coop (our bi-weekly Thursday classes) set a record this fall by having the first ever coop semester without any cancellations! Compliments are in order to all the families attending coop classes for making clean-up go so well! We have been blessed with an exceptional spirit of team work and going the extra mile, which odd as it seems, makes the load lighter on everyone. Thank you to each one of you for being a part of that!

Looking forward to the spring semester, our first parent meeting is January 10th, 2 pm at Monument Bible Church. We are planning to hold it in person, as well as on Facebook Live. Parent meetings are a great place to be involved and help to make our group what it needs to be to meet the needs of our member families. The once-a-month meetings are usually attended by about 5-7 parents and I would really like to see more parents become involved. If you have an insight on how to make the meetings easier to attend, please share your thoughts with me! Children are welcome to attend these meetings! There is a gym where they can play, or they are welcome to sit with their attending parents.

After nearly eight weeks of answering my kids constant question of “How long is it until the next coop day?” Valley Faith Coop classes will indeed be starting again on January 13th, with roller skating that same evening! There will be a short orientation for our new families on January 6th.

Volunteer Openings! We are in need of a technologically inclined member to help manage and update our websites. We also need a vice-chair to join Laura Leggott and I on the leadership team. Full duties are outlined in the by-laws, but what we really need for the rest of this school year is someone to manage and post events on our members only facebook page, and also communicate with people who have home school questions on our public facebook page. If you have a heart to help in any of those ways, please contact either me or Laura.

It has been my privilege and joy to serve our group by being the chair this year. I praise and thank God for this community of Believers, endeavoring together and helping each other to raise our children to be excellent members of our society and of God’s Kingdom, and that we live in a country with the freedom to do so without fear.

Colossians 2:6-7 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

-Kelly B.  VHSA Chair 2021-22