After three years of Foundations (all three cycles) and three "tours" of Essentials, my thirteen year-old son has jumped right into Challenge A of Classical Conversations! Although it is still Classical Conversations, in many respects the Challenge program is a whole different way of doing things for us and I'm trying to give us both time to adjust.
We are still meeting weekly with our CC community, so what's new? For eight years, I have chosen all of our curriculum, created our schedules and routines, tweaked the plans and made adjustments to the curriculum - and sometimes, ditched it altogether! Now, what's different is that I am placing my trust in the classical methods and materials of CC's Challenge A program to help me decide what books to use, what subjects to study, and what the assignments will be each week. My son has a list of what needs to be accomplished each week before the next community day and he knows someone else (his tutor) will be checking in to see that he is completing and understanding his work. I really love that part! We have a great tutor who is also the dad of one of my son's best friends AND he is their football coach, so he is in great hands with this tutor on our community day.
One of the things I am learning, is how to let go, because my kids suddenly changed from doing almost every subject together, to doing separate work in every subject. The first couple of weeks stressed me out because I was trying to figure out how to keep one child working independently, while I was helping the other child! I miss the times of sitting and reading a good book aloud to both of them, but maybe that will come later in the year or when we have a longer break in the winter.
My planner looks a little different, too, and now my daughter knows to look at my list for her in my planner and she can write out her schedule of how she wants to accomplish the work for that day. It helped me so much to have both kids start with math first, in the same room, followed by her practice of memory work for Foundations, like we have for the last three years. Then, after we get that done, everything else will happen more fluidly. We used to have a regular routine for the order of what we would work on each day for school, but now, the kids have some ownership in choosing what we will work on next. I am just trying to give them blocks of time for working together with me in the areas that they need help in, and other blocks of independent work.
The Challenge A Guide gives all of the assignments for the week, but we are still learning how to break down those assignments for each day. I came across a spreadsheet recently that another parent
created and it has the assignments written out for all of the 4 days of
the Challenge A work at home.
It was editable, so I changed some things, but printed it out and I can continue to adjust it as we go. It was SO helpful to me and my student to see a plan for the whole week, broken down day-by-day that someone else has used. It also helped me to see how to schedule some of the assignments better, so we aren't reading all day on Day 1 and writing everything on Day 4.
Right now, in Week 4, I feel like we are just figuring out what is required of us each week. My son is dyslexic, dysgraphic, and has some ADD in the mix, so I have to spend more time with him in certain areas and give him the tools to learn on his own. We are using the Challenge A Guide as our guide, but Classical Conversations is always extremely clear on their stance that the parent is always the "teacher" and the tutor's role is to equip and encourage. As my son's teacher, I have made some adjustments so that the Challenge A work is manageable for him and we are trying to focus on the PROCESS of learning each strand, not the PRODUCT! Below are some tips for what is working for us right now in Challenge A.
Latin: We work together on this subject every day, so we are learning it together. Like Essentials, we practice the "memory work" of vocabulary and declension endings and then work on some sentences with the exercises. I also purchased the Visual Latin dvd's and we are enjoying these informative, lighthearted videos that really explain the grammar of Latin well. There is a document that even shows how VL lessons correspond to the Henle text.
Literature: My son is dyslexic and so far he is really enjoying listening to the audio books of the literature selections. This is his favorite thing to do each day, so this has taken the stress out of Literature. I also lead him through the LTW exercises and ask lots of questions as we are working through the ANI chart. I am his scribe. He can type the outline and the essay, but I am usually nearby for assistance. I am reading the books myself, so we can discuss them well. I like the questions in the Words Aptly Spoken Children's Literature book because it gives thought provoking questions for each chapter of all of the Challenge A books to jump-start our conversations.
Geography: I'm still trying to figure out what is best for this strand. He is dysgraphic, so writing and drawing anything by hand, let alone a whole continent, is extremely difficult for him. He has been persevering, but he may only trace or draw half of the assigned map on one day. We are thankful for the free website of Sheppard Software and he enjoys doing the tutorials and quizzes there to help him memorize the locations and features of the maps. I highly recommend this website!
Math: He wanted to try Saxon 8/7 and we persevered through the lessons for one week. We both decided that continuing on with Math U See is a much better fit for him in the way that he learns. He needs more than one day to practice new math concepts and to focus on mastering a concept before he moves on to other new ones. He did ask me to add the Saxon drill pages and mental math, so I ordered the small Saxon text with the drill sheets and MUS now has mental math problems in every lesson of the current level he is working on, so that is covered!
Rhetoric: I am thoroughly enjoying reading the books and discussing these ideas with my son! He reads It Couldn't Just Happen on his own, then we take some time to talk about each section of the chapter and this helps him to summarize it aloud and dictate his summary to me. We also read The Fallacy Detective separately and then talk about it and go through the exercises before the following community day.
Science Research: I have helped him find just 2-3 sources to look over for the science topic and then we choose two to write from. So far, we have used simple encyclopedias or books written for children or students and I only require a paragraph. I have sat down with him to talk through the process of creating a key word outline and then on another day we talk through writing that information into a paragraph.
In the future, he will take more of each of these roles on for himself, but for now, I am remembering the wise saying, that the Challenge years may be a "drop-off" program, but not a "drop-out" program for the parents. I am making a point of trying to spend some time in Challenge A every week, even if it's 15 minutes to help me hear and see what they are talking about in Class and to hear their dialogue. If you can get away to attend a little bit of Challenge with your child, it may be beneficial to you both.
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