Our Weekly Routine for CC Foundations

This year marks our 3rd year in Classical Conversations and each year I have tried to "tweak" our routine of how we practice the memory work on school days at home.  The children are in Foundations and Essentials classes in our CC community on Mondays, so we spend about 30 min. each day Tuesday through Friday practicing that week's memory work for Foundations in a variety of subjects.

We begin our school time each day with CC Foundations memory work.  With this as our launching pad, we begin all together and I make this a top priority for each day.  I made this tri-fold visual display so we can all see the memory work for the whole week we are memorizing it.  I was using the CC audio cd's, but now that the CC Cycle 2 app. for the iPad was released, I conveniently open it and we listen to each subject's audio track and then practice it ourselves.  Below is our weekly routine for learning the Foundations memory work.

Monday:
Classical Conversations community day!

• Tutors introduce new memory work in Foundations
• Students participate in a science activity or experiment, a fine arts project or lesson, a time of review, and they give a short oral presentation

Our Tri-fold Memory Work display

Tuesday:

• Review this week's memory work with our tri-fold display board and CC Cycle 2 iPad app
• Copy part of the history sentence for handwriting practice
• I read aloud the History Highlight and the Science Snippet
• Math facts flashcards

Wednesday: 

• Review this week's memory work with tri-fold disply board and iPad app
• Continue copying the history sentence
• Add in review of Geography locations from the last two weeks, or so
• Math facts flashcards or Math U See online drill

Thursday:

• Review this week's memory work
• Continue copying the history sentence or copy the Bible verse
• Add in review of other subjects, possibly using the English or Latin file folder games
• Math facts practice with CC Squares, Cubes, & Roots  in page protectors or multiplication placemat drills with dry erase marker

Latin 1st Conjugation Endings file folder activity

Friday: 

• Review this week's memory work, usually without the tri-fold, from memory
• Complete history sentence copying or the Bible verse
• On Fridays we usually spend extra time in reviewing past weeks as we work on pages for Memory Work Binders from Wisdom and Righteousness lapbooks 
• Sometimes, we opt to play a Review Game like Jeopardy with the Memory Work from past weeks 

This is a summary of how we practice each day, but it might change a bit here and there.  We have to adjust and review more as the year moves along in preparation for Memory Masters proofing.  Last year we spent time listening to the Timeline song in its entirety at least once a week, but now that we know the Timeline pretty well, when we sing the current week Timeline portion each day we usually practice more than just the current week by backing up or moving along forward.  I also might have the children jump on the mini-trampoline while reciting or pass a small ball back and forth.  We might use silly voices or just repeat something several times in a row.  Sometimes I will turn the visual display around later in the week so they can't look at it anymore and test their memories.  I wrote about A Multi-Sensory Classical Education in the fall.  We work on it consistently, but variety and multi-sensory learning seem to be the sparks that helps us to keep memorizing so many facts week in and week out!