Classical Conversations Cycle 3, Week 1

The week I have been waiting for since March has arrived!  We began Classical Conversations!  Here is a glimpse into our first week of CC Cycle 3.  Monday we got up early and made the 25 minute drive with a few minutes to spare.  The kids helped me set up my classroom for Foundations and the morning went smoothly.  I think all the children and moms enjoyed being together. 

Ready to go to our first day of CC with new backpacks!

Our director decided for our classes to all begin with Art, so after introductions and prayer, we learned about drawing with simple shapes. Then I had the children copy a simple drawing of a Lion.  They added lots of details and had plenty of time to finish this project.  I was the most nervous about introducing the new grammar, but I kept it moving and we did pretty well.  My daughter and my all of the other children that I am tutoring in Foundations did well with their oral presentations “All About Me.”  I was excited that both of my children did not refuse to speak in front of their group!  My son said his went well, too.  The science experiment worked and this was where the children needed the most assistance, but when they got it to work, they were really excited!  Then we played two review games.  I think the favorite game was played with dice that I printed off of C3, cut out and put together.  One dice has the subjects of the memory work on each side and the other two dice have different voices or actions to do while you are saying that piece of the memory work.  By this last half hour of the morning the boys were asking when they could eat lunch and getting them up and moving was helpful!

"Winking" Science Experiment

The boys drawing Leo the Lion

The girls working on their art lesson

We all had lunch outside and there was a huge space in the parking lot for all of the children to play football, basketball, ride scooters, or just move around.  I helped my friend set up her classroom for Essentials and we began that after lunch.  Both of my children were more nervous about this class.  We worked on our English grammar charts first.  Our tutor gave an overview of these and what we should work on during this week.  Then the children practiced copying from the charts on white boards.  Next, she had them pair up with a partner and play a place value game with a deck of cards.  B met a new friend and they had fun playing the math game together.  J liked the math game, too.  Last, we worked on our IEW History Theme-Based Writing.  Our tutor led the children through the instructions for this week's assignment and they brainstormed ideas for quality adjectives and how to use alliteration.  The student resource book is going to be helpful with a thesaurus of words that can be used in place of the "Banned Words."  After that, we cleaned up and loaded the car with everything we brought for the day.  It was a good feeling to have accomplished so much in a school day!

Math card games in Essentials

At home, we have worked on the memory work each day.  I am figuring out how to add in more depth about the history sentence, science sentence, and geography memory work for this week.  On Tuesday, I read part of a chapter in The Light and the Glory for Children about Christopher Columbus and we kept singing our history sentence throughout the day! On Wednesday we listened to Story of the World Volume 2, Chapter 30 & 31 about Christopher Columbus and other European explorers, Amerigo Vespucci and Ferdinand Magellan.  B drew the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria from our Draw, Write Now book.  I also had everyone take a closer look at our world map and work atlas to see where Columbus thought he was going and where he really landed.  B read an easy reader about Christopher Columbus during her reading time.

Both of the children are working quickly through the first few chapters of their new Math U See books.  It is nice to build their confidence up again.  B is working on the multiplication facts for 0, 1, & 2.  J is working on division facts for 0, 1, 10, 5, & 3.  It makes me smile when I remind him that a certain fact is a Times Tale and he instantly remembers the answer!  The Times Tales have really stuck with him so far! J and I are working through his post test of Barton Reading & Spelling Level 5.  He is almost ready to graduate to another level of Barton!

We are doing copywork of charts for the English portion of our Essentials class.  So the kids are copying things like: the 8 parts of speech, 5 parts of a sentence, 4 sentence structures, 4 sentence purposes, and the 7 sentence patterns.  It works well to do this on white boards.  B was extremely motivated to work on the poem for her writing assignment in Lesson 1 of our U.S. History-Based Writing Lessons, Volume 1 from IEW.  She completed it in two days with her best, beautiful cursive handwriting!  It is wonderful to see her eagerness to write, now that she has a source text to write a bout.  J is doing well with it, too, and he just has a bit more to finish on his poem.  Typing and editing on the laptop works much better for him along with the Word Q software that assists him with spelling.  I am enjoying the IEW way!

I think the thing that is hard for me is that I have too many resources that I want to add into our week, and little “extra” time.  I still want to look at science books from the library, watch videos about Christopher Columbus from the library, read two more books or parts of books, and make a paper ship!  So we are not having trouble finding enough to learn about or do with CC!