Friday, June 8, 2012

Classical Conversations At Home

As you know from my previous post about Curriculum Confusion I was able to obtain a Classical Conversations Foundations Guide 3rd Edition on clearance a few months back. This was before the role out of the new 4th Edition that is why I got for so cheap. It was only $15 at the time and the orginal price was $50.

Well for those of you who don't know Classical Conversations or CC for short is a program started by founder Leigh Bortins(author of Echo In Celebration and The Core: Teaching Your Child the Foundations of Classical Education) to help support and enhance homeschoolers in their desire to classically educate at home. There are CC communities all over the U.S. where once a week the students get together and are lead by a CC Tutor in the weekly memory work from the foundations guide in the form of tunes, jingles, and chants. They also conduct a science experiment and have a fine arts portion which changes between drawing, tin whistle lessons, classical artist, and classical composers throughout the year. I have been to visit two different CC Campuses in my local area and I was greatly impressed with the program and set up. Although I totally love the program I was not sold on it for our particular family due to the cost of enrolling all my kids and also me not feeling like I could make the commitment to participate in a once week class every week for 24weeks with a two littles still(my 3yr old and my 10month old). So we were sad about not being able to give this a shot. But when I got a hold of the Foundations Guide I decided to give this a try at home instead.

What better time than this summer to start on Cycle 1 of the 3 cycle Guide. We started last week and if we continue through the summer we will hit Week 24 at the end of October. Which works out perfectly for our family cause our lease is up and we will be moving at the end of October. So we can just keep out the materials we use with the CC Memory Board that I made(pictured below) and our Math books so that I can start getting everything packed up. And then we can take a 2 week fall break and get started in our new curriculum for 2012-2013 school year. So it seems like this is going to work out great. I guess if this goes all well we will started Cycle 2 this coming Summer and Cycle 3 the following. Its turning out to be a great Summer Homeschool Curriculum.


Of course I want to share with you guys what we are doing each week and how we are tweeking it to fit our family and whatnot. So I decided to go ahead and do a weekly post called CC at Home Cycle 1 Week(whatever week it is). So be on a look out for that. I am so excited. The children really seem to enjoy it.

Other than the Foundations Guide we are using:

Drawing With Children by Mona Brookes- Fine Arts
Prima Latina- Latin( I didnt like the way the Latin was set up in the Guide and we were already working our way through Prima so I am just sticking with that.)
Kingfisher History Encyclopedia- History Sentence(Used to look up more information of the history sentence and the timeline sentences)
Janice VanCleave's Awesome, Magical, Bizarre, and Incredible Experiments- Science Experiments( The Guide uses a few experiments from this book so I borrowed a copy from the library and made copies of the pages I would need for Cycle 1.
We are also adding our Hebrew Studies Bible Memory Work in as well( I will do a separate blog to share those resources.)



10 comments:

  1. How do you keep it all together. This looks interesting but I can't keep up. I have not found a way to be consistent with memory work.

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    1. Hi Tiffany,
      Its been coming together pretty good now that I am using the foundations guide to give me a week to week scope of what to cover. And then using the board to post everything as well. After morning chores and breakfast we start on math. Then after math I have the kids gather round the living room and pull the board out and and do the chants, songs, and jingles for the stuff on the board. With the maps we let them mark the location for the week with raisins, chocolate chips, or cheerios or something. SO basically it become built into the daily routine. I wasn't consistant before I made the board either. They can also pull it out and review it with each other throughout the week as well.

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    2. Thanks I am looking for a 3rd edition guide now.

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  2. I love your blog! Thanks for sharing your experience. Very helpful and inspirational. Please keep us updated. Love your videos as well, I refer to them often! Thank you, Amanda

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    1. Thanks Amanda. I am glad I could be of help. I just share things as I do them. Its kind of like a journal for me to look back on as well.

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  3. I've been interested in CC but as you said the cost of enrolling three children is prohibitive - I have a friends who are moms of onlys that can afford it and like it - but we can't. I also don't like SOTW which it seems is the only history they prefer and use. I'm also following your blog now from THL you can visit me at http://growingforchrist.wordpress.com

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    1. Thanks Sarah. I am not a fan of SOTW either. That is a lot of the reasons why I prefer the older edition of Well Trained Mind cause the newer ones recommend SOTW over some of the other resources she had in the earlier editions. I personally just like to use a History Encyclopedia for a History Spine along with the Bible and some nice laminated maps. We gather extra reading materials like Historical Fiction, Biographies, and other sources from our local library. That has worked for us so far. I will go over and visit your blog as well. Thanks for sharing the link. I will add it to my reader.

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  4. Hi Erin, THANK YOU for posting the video. I have looked at that book used on the WTM forum and have been sitting on the fence for a while. I understood the concept but we don't have a CC group around here so I've never seen the book in person and the site is rather vague. Thank you, we do memory work but I soon lose track of what we need to be memorizing (or get overwhelmed). I think I'm sold and will have to try and get the CC book (hopefully an older used copy).

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  5. Hi Erin, Thanks for loving to share your great ideas. You've helped me see how I can start right away and focus on one part of memory work until we get a book. I found your v-log first and somehow found your blog, which is beautiful by the way. Great stuff!
    Thanks
    Roshawna

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  6. Hi Erin. I know this is an old post. I came across it in my hunt to see if anyone has a "match up" with the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia and CC Cycle 1. It appears you used these together a few years ago and I thought i'd ask if you happened to write down which pages you used on which weeks…and if you did…would you mind sharing???? I would REALLY appreciate it if you don't mind. THANK YOU!! :)

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