What does this look like week to week?
We meet on Tuesdays, September - May, alternating between Class Days, Nature Days, and occasional field trips.
Class Days
Class Days are the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays at Mill City Church in Northeast Minneapolis from 10am-1:30pm.
For Students:
Our Class Days focus on collaborative learning and community building within age groups. We begin with a whole group gathering time and then students disperse into classes based on age. Our day consists of three class periods and a lunch period.
Nursery: Our littlest Hive members (0-2 years old) spend their Class Days in our nursery playing with open-ended toys, reading stories, singing songs, playing games, and creating simple art projects.
PreK/K: Our PreK/K class is for 3 year olds - Kindergarten. The class is play-based and story-based. The children often start class in circle time with songs, rhymes, and a fairytale. The remainder of their class time is spent rotating freely through stations with crafts, arts, games, books, and free-play. They also have one hour of gym class where they play games and get their wiggles out.
Lower School & Upper School: Our Lower School is for 1st-4th graders and our Upper School is for 5th-8th graders. All of the Lower and Upper School students rotate between a gym class, a homeroom class (working on collaborative and group skills), and an elective class (changing each semester). In 2024-2025 the electives we offered were:
Art: Styles of Famous Illustrators
The Five Themes of Geography
Sections of Science
Gameschool
High School: The 2024-2025 school year was our first year as a homeschool co-op and we only had students enrolled through 8th grade. We are excited to grow this area of our co-op and we have a lot of ideas for how to implement a high school program that fits our mission and can be accomplished whether we have small or large number of students. Please reach out to us if you would like to discuss this further and hear more about our hopes for our future high schoolers.
Lunch: We all break for lunch on our Class Days. Students eat a bag lunch from home together in their age groups. This gives them more opportunities to build deeper relationships with one another.
NOTE: We divide the children into age groups based on enrollments and class sizes. The structure listed above was for the 2024-2025 school and is subject to change in future years based on enrollments and class sizes/needs.
For Parents/Guardians:
Each parent/guardian is assigned two class periods, out of the three, to assist teachers. If a parent is teaching one class, they assist for one other class period. The third hour is for parents to socialize and support each other in the Parent Lounge.
Nature Days
Nature Days are the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays at Springbrook Nature Center in Fridley. These sessions will start with a short lesson on an aspect of nature or survival followed by outdoor unstructured play. We meet in any weather that is not considered unsafe. Through Nature Days, children not only build knowledge of their environment, but also increase physical activity, build confidence, develop creativity, and learn resilience.
Field Trips
When there is a 5th Tuesday of the month, we offer an optional field trip that our members may choose to attend. In the fall of 2024 we went to an apple orchard and in the spring of 2025 we have plans visit the Raptor Center.
