Why Did We Join a CC Community?

This question takes me back a few years.  I remember doing fun hands-on projects and reading wonderful books with our unit studies at home, but thinking that it would be so much more fun to do these projects with another family or two!  However, no other families that I knew wanted to purchase the same curriculum we were using and so they were working on other things.  We had participated in some co-ops in our early years of home education, but the classes that parents usually offered were art, P.E. and group games, and Spanish, while I taught music classes.  They were fun and it was great to get to know other home schooling families, but these classes were more for the relationships than the subject matter and it was always difficult to schedule and organize these groups.

As my children grew, I knew I needed to teach them how to write well and I wanted to expand their academic learning.  I did not know how to do this if I was their only audience member.  I knew they would learn so much more if they could hear other students present their work and if they had an audience to write for.  I also looked ahead at home education through middle school and high school and was convinced that I wanted to be able to stay with this for the long haul, but felt like I would need to learn from other parents who are farther along on the home school trail.

I felt like I was searching for something to help me in all of these areas and I even considered driving over an hour away for weekly classes at a larger home school program.  Then, I remembered a conversation with a friend from another state who first told me about Classical Conversations a couple of years prior and I decided to look it up on the internet.  Amazingly, there was a link that said a CC community was going to form that year in a town only 20 minutes away from me.  I prayed and called the director's number on the web page and a whole new world opened up to me!

So looking back now, after three wonderful years of participating in a Classical Conversations community, here is why we decided to jump aboard and to stick with it!

Academic Learning - our children have learned so many skills in CC including memorization techniques, oral presentation skills, Latin and English grammar, math facts, history and science facts, geography locations, Bible verses, writing skills, a historical timeline of events from creation to the present, and all of the U.S. Presidents (which I learned with them for the first time for myself).

Social Learning - our children have learned, in a Christian community, how to handle conflict with peers, how to get along with others, and how to make new friends while also enjoying weekly classes, lunch, and recess.

Group Activities - we have also been able to participate in activities that would have been harder for us to do with just the three of us at home like science experiments, our historical "wax museum", math fact relays, class presentations at our end of the semester programs, and field trips.

Support - I have learned a wealth of information through the greater CC community through my tutor training, the Parent Practicums, and resources that have been made available to me.  I now have such a greater understanding of classical educational methods and how God created all of us to learn.  I have learned or "re-learned" subject matter from tutoring and teaching it to my children.  I am an even better teacher to my children than I was a few years ago and I know that I have other home educating parents to turn to with my questions.  I also have a plan for home educating our children all the way through high school!

Community - most of all, we needed relationships!  We have made so many new friends, who share a similar philosophy of home education through high school and a Biblical worldview.  Now, we have a group of friends to invite to field trips, play dates, and other community events and we enjoy wonderful discussions with them.  We have fun, but we also build special bonds with them while learning together.

 Spiritual Growth - of course, God's plans always involve our spiritual growth.  I have trusted in the Lord and He has helped me with tutoring both Foundations and Essentials and learning to teach my children what I am learning.  He has helped us to grow in grace, mercy, and patience toward other families in this larger community of brothers and sisters in Christ.  Now, He is growing my faith and trust in Him even more, as He is calling me to step away from my "comfortable" CC community to begin a new CC community in my own town, to reach out to other home educating families.  The children have also grown in their knowledge and understanding of Him.  We have seen the mission of CC, "To know God and to make Him known", in action.

I am thankful for the academic and social learning, group activities, support, community, and spiritual growth that my family has found through Classical Conversations and it has made a world of difference for us!  What valuable experiences have you found through being part of a home school community?