A "Normal" Week of CC at Home

Here is a glimpse of what we are really doing this week at home to practice our memory work for CC Cycle 1.  This is our second year and I can see how my children are learning to use their brains as a tool for memorization.  Just this week, my daughter was memorizing something and she said, "Mom, I just made a little song out of it."  Both children are growing in their confidence in reciting the memory work this year, too.  My son, who is dyslexic, struggled with the memory work last year.  Now, I am seeing him volunteer in class to try to recite some of it when his tutor asks!  He still needs lots of encouragement and sometimes more repetition than others, but his memorization skills have improved by leaps and bounds!  I am proud of him!   I think the main key is consistently working on it 5 days a week.  When we spend 30 minutes in CC learning the new memory work and then another 30minutes each of our other 4 school days at home, I see the best results. 

Classical Conversations Cycle 1, Week 9, Nov. 2012
Foundations:  In general, I have a large white board that I write all of the week's memory work on and we keep it up there most of the week.  This week, I was able to erase most of it on Thursday and then on Friday they had to say it without seeing it there on the board!  I am a visual learner, so this mama teacher needs to see the memory work in order to attempt to learn it with her children!

Bible verse:  We already memorized earlier in the year as the 5th commandment, only two words are different in this longer version

History: CC History song and recite with the white board.  This one was a bit long, so the song helped, but it is slightly different than the way it is written.  I also try to read the History Highlight each Tuesday.

Science: super easy because my kids already know this - but a nice photo on the Science Cards and its explanation are helpful

English Grammar:  We are listening to the Prepositions Song from Nogreaterjoy on CC Connect and memorizing our list of Prepositions each week, the hand motions actually help me.

Latin:Again, we are using the CC Latin songs for memorizing the declensions while we read them from the white board. Nothing exciting, but it works for us!

Math:  We are used the skip counting song for review and then practiced reading the math facts listed on the white board.  Our multiplication flashcards only go up to the 12's, so I need to make some for the higher facts.

Timeline:  B and I use the hand motions while we practice the timeline.  J does not like those, but I think repeating it after me and listening to the Timeline Song is helping him.  We listened to it more this week for review.  I am making a set of mini-timeline cards from a pdf file on CC Connect and I think we will try using them next week.

 Geography: We traced the locations on our laminated maps at the beginning of the week. This week,  we went back and reviewed most of this year's geography and they did well with it.

Language Arts / Essentials:
We worked on the continuation of our report about Ancient Egypt and using the #2 sentence opener, prepositional phrases.  We also worked on memorizing the charts with songs one day, reciting aloud, reading, and writing.  My son never chooses to write the charts, but he can type them efficiently.   My daughter has been writing more charts out since I decided to award 3 beans per handwritten chart instead of one bean.  I think it really does take more time and effort to hand copy a chart, but I don't want to discourage those students who will never write them out, but are reading them over and over again and learning that way.  Our new sentence pattern was pretty easy and I just feel like the kids have a light bulb that keeps flashing "on" this year in Essentials!  Last year, they were so overwhelmed and this year they are answering questions in class and wanting to read aloud!  What a turn around, especially for my dyslexic son!

I feel that I have a renewed energy for practicing the memory work this week!  I downloaded the new ipad App. for Cycle 1 and it works really well!  It is so easy to use this instead of my cd that was skipping when we practice all together for the week's memory work.  Then, I started having each child review a past week or two once a day on their own during their individual reading time.  It only takes a few minutes!  I think the payoff for all of this memorizing is that now I can see them wanting to do it and meeting the challenge!