El Paso homeschooling moms teach their kids with hands-on experiments. Today’s is- cooking food with solar power

EL PASO, Texas - The Sun City Homeschool Co-op in El Paso is a group of moms that create fun elective classes for their children to participate in. On Wednesday, the planned experiment was to teach their children about solar-powered cooking. Kids were able to make their own smores with the help of the sun, as well as roast hot dogs and other arts and crafts.

"The homeschool community here in El Paso is huge! And I didn't know that- we've only been here since November. And I walked into it and I was overwhelmed and that's a great feeling knowing that the community is welcoming and you can find your support," said Jamie Nico, the President of Sun City Homeschool Co-op.

The Co-op's mission is to share information and resources, as well as providing the access to a homeschooling community. The group does this by engaging their children in group activities, as well as being a support group for like-minded moms.

"We find there's a lot of new parents that are looking for resources, and we even have moms that have been doing it for years that need mom support,"..."so having that mom group is essential, not just for the kids but for us," Nico added.

The elective class has been running since January with about 60 students. Now with the help of a $10,000 grant they have received, the program has nearly doubled, with 40 families, and 107 students participating as of late July, and the moms hope to have more families join in the next year.

Jessica Gomez, the Co-op's Treasurer said, "we're really excited because we're using that to put on more elective classes for our families,"..."the grant is going to allow us to fund better classes," such as an upcoming anatomy class she mentioned.

The donation of $10,000 to help the program expand came from a partnership between the Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development, or CREEED, and the VELA Educational Fund. The grant is divided out between each eight week term they have over a year.

If you are interested in joining the Sun City Homeschool Co-Op, you should click here to join their Facebook group. It's $20 per kid, per eight week term, which helps pay for the supplies for each pop-up class.