Growth in Challenge A, First Semester

Wow!  Times really does seem to fly by me and here it is already December!  We have been working hard to tackle the assignments set before my son in Challenge A and he is doing pretty well.  He is enjoying it and taking pride in having his assignments completed.  He can participate well in literature discussions and translate some Latin!  His drawings of the continents may not be the most artistic in his class, but I can see the shapes of the places he is drawing and recognize them.  We have enjoyed great discussions about why the world did not just happen and have learned many scientific facts that actually show that God did create our amazing world.

My son is dyslexic and dysgraphic, so he has needed lots of my support and time with me sitting beside him, helping him to complete his work.  However, I have learned that there is a correlation between which parents are in class and involved at home and how their children are doing during their weekly community day.  So, children who do not have learning disabilities are still needing some help from their parents to learn how to manage their work at this point.

Now, he is preparing to take a blue book exam at home over the break and I am having to help him understand this type of assessment, what it means, and why we do it.  Of course, I am also having to show him how to answer some of the questions and what that would look like because he has never done this type of assessment before.  So, it's all a learning process.

At the end of the first semester, our son can do these things by himself:

• Read or listen to an audio book of the literature
• Read The Fallacy Detective
• Find his geography terms and study them
• Find his catechism questions and study them
• Go to Sheppard Software online and practice geography countries, states, capitals, and features
• Find a World Book Online encyclopedia article for science, print it out, and highlight important information
• Practice his guitar assignments
• Sometimes he can do his math independently, too

These are areas where my son needs me to discuss or explain things in more depth or work alongside of him:

• We watch his math lesson video together and usually do the first assignment or two together, until he doesn't need me
• He prefers for me to read aloud It Couldn't Just Happen to him and talk about each section, then he types a short summary as we go
• We work on Latin together
• We work on the Lost Tools of Writing assignments together
• He is still dictating to me what he wants on his fused Key Word Outline for his science presentations
• Of course, sometimes I also drill him on more grammatical information, like geography terms or maps, Latin vocabulary, or the catechism questions

So, I feel like he has already grown in areas, and he is seeing that studying pays off and we can still see areas where he has opportunity for growth.  I am thankful for his community of friends and a great tutor who challenges, yet encourages him to do his best!   

Our 2014-15 Curriculum Choices

I'm excited to be sharing our curriculum choices for a new school year!  In August of 2014, my son will begin the Classical Conversations Challenge A program for Jr. High students and my daughter will begin her last year of CC Foundations and Essentials programs.  I am also directing a new CC community in our home town that we are super excited about!  It will be different for me to not have both children learning most subjects together, as we have always done for over eight years!  However, I believe that my son is ready to learn to work more independently of me and he will have a great tutor to mentor him this year and to hold him accountable.  Choosing to stay with CC in the Challenge years has also simplified my choices for curriculum for next year!  *This post has also been added to my Pages, so it can be found easily!*

Challenge A

Just a little bit about Challenge A, this junior high program combines learning skills in weekly seminars with a tutor and take home assignments, where the parent is still a teacher and facilitator.  All Challenge levels, all the way through high school, focus on six academic skills instead of dividing learning into "subjects".  The six skills are grammar, exposition/composition, debate, research, rhetoric, and logic.  Here is how each of those skills translates into the curriculum and subjects he will be studying.  All of the Challenge resources below can be found at the Challenge A Resources page on the CC website.
 
Grammar/Latin:  Henle's First Year Latin text and grammar

Exposition/Composition/Literature: 
The Lost Tools of Writing, Level 1 by Andrew Kern
Words Aptly Spoken: Children's Literature by Jen Greenholt
Literature selections:
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis
Number the Stars by Lowis Lowry
Amos Fortune, Free Man by Elizabeth Yates
The Secret Garden by Frances Burnett
The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli
A Gathering of Days by Joan W. Blos
Crispin:  The Cross of Lead by Avi
and The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth Speare

Research/Science:  Biology Lab sheets, Sketch Notebook, Lyrical Life Science

Debate/Geography:  Atlas and Classical Conversations Geography Trivium Tables

Rhetoric/Apologetics:
It Couldn't Just Happen by Lawrence O. Richards
The Fallacy Detective by Nathaniel Bluedorn

Logic/Mathematics:  Math U See Epsilon and Zeta
Weekly seminar math discussions in Challenge will center on concepts from the Saxon Math series, but we have chosen to continue with Math U See at home, primarily because it is a good fit for the learning style and needs of our dyslexic/dysgraphic son.  All students can review or preview math concepts, even if they are different than the lessons they will study at home that week.

Reading and Spelling: Barton Reading and Spelling System
Although not a part of the Challenge curriculum, we have also found tremendous success with the Barton system over the last few years.  It is designed to help dyslexic students of any age learn to read and spell. After a much needed long break this summer, we still want to complete Level 8 before we really begin the work load of Challenge A.  This will be a huge accomplishment for our son, because it will be the end of his work in reading and spelling in the English language.  Then, during our longer breaks or next summer, I would like to work on Levels 9 and 10, which are about roots from foreign languages.  

6th grade for "B", Foundations Cycle 3 and Essentials

My daughter will be in her fourth year of Foundations and Essentials this year (yes, I started her a year "early" in Essentials).  Since she will be repeating Cycle 3 and has already completed four years of Essentials well, I plan on using this year to develop or enrich areas she has wanted to study more.  She has asked to study more Latin and science over the last few months and she has always enjoyed art, so I feel that this should be the year for her to learn more about some of those things, since she has mastered so much already.  She is a fantastic speller and has mastered cursive handwriting, so I am probably dropping those from her list of things to do every day.  Instead, I think I will have her copy Bible verses or history sentences for memory work and require her to keep a notebook of her CC work. 

Foundations Cycle 3:  Foundations Curriculum Guide, 4th edition by Leigh A. Bortins includes memory work and activities in American history and geography; anatomy and chemistry; the full CC history timeline; math facts, laws, and formulas; English participles, irregular verbs, and clauses; Latin vocabulary and John 1:1-7 in English and Latin; American artists and composers

Classical Conversations books and resources we will be using:
Cycle 3 Memory Flashcards   
Cycle 3Audio cd 
Cycle 3 Geography Trivium Tables 
Cycle 3 Classical Acts & Facts History Cards Artists and Composers
Cycle 3 Classical Acts & Facts Science cards for Anatomy, Chemistry, and Origins
All of the above resources can be found on the Foundations Resources page of the CC website.

Other books and resources to compliment the Foundations curriculum:
Wisdom and Righteousness notebooks

Lyrical Life Science
Apologia's Anatomy & Physiology of the Human Body
Story of the World Volumes III and IV
Latin for Children Primer A (and B if we can get that far)
Math U See Epsilon and Zeta
possibly IEW Fix-it or Daily Grams 6
American historical literature selections

Essentials language arts resources:
Essentials of the English Language 
English Grammar Trivium Table
Quid et Quo Trivium Table
IEW Teaching Writing with Structure and Style
IEW U.S History-Based Writing, Volume 1 - newly revised!
All of the above books can be found on the Essentials Resources page of the CC website.

What curriculum are you excited about for this year?

CC Parent Practicum

We had an awesome CC Parent Practicum this week!  It was such a wonderful time of learning and sharing about classical education, learning about Rhetoric, and getting to know new CC friends.  I was blessed by our speaker, Deb, who shared tons of information about classical education and especially the Rhetoric stage and skills for that stage of learning.  I learned about things like the amplification, schemes, and tropes.  Our CC book store was open and I was able to look through pages of books that I had been wanting to skim through in person and make my purchases of curriculum for this year.  I talked to experienced Challenge A parents and asked questions as I plan for our jump into Challenge next year with my oldest child.

As a director of a new CC community here in my home town, I was thrilled to see all of the moms of the families joining our community in attendance.  We talked about how to get started, what books and resources they need, and they were able to ask many questions and look at the books in person.

I purchased The Lost Tools of Writing for our use in Challenge A this year and after I had time to sit down and read through part of it, I recognized terms that I had just learned in our discussions on Rhetoric this week!  A light bulb turned on when I could see charts in the book that were similar to the chart we were filling out in our Practicum.  I am a grammar student of Rhetoric, so it made me feel good that I knew what some of those words meant!

Jo, Deb, and Christal portrayed how to ask your students good questions when they don't want to talk

Tutor training in Foundations was also a blessing for me as I prepare to direct our new tutors in a new community next year!  I was the Tutor Trainer, so I have been reading, watching webinars, and "marinading" in classical thought for a few weeks.  Our discussions were rich and helpful.  We had a great group of trainees, some who have tutored and some who are brand new, so it was great to watch the discussions going on between them and to hear different perspectives.

Children enjoyed the CC camps, too!  Young children learned about shapes and art in Play camp, other children learned about maps and the world in Geo Drawing camp, and our older children gained tons of experience with small presentations and games in Public Speaking camp.  I watched my own teen son work with the preschoolers as a volunteer helper and he really learned a lot of patience and understanding this week, too!

The Geo Draw campers share what they have learned

My son is the helper on the far left.  What a great group of Play campers!

CC Parent Practicum is a fantastic way to get re-energized, encouraged, equipped, and connected to other home educators in your community.  If you have an opportunity to attend a Parent Practicum, sign up!  It will bless you!

Visiting Challeng A

I have been reading about the Classical Conversations Challenge program since we started 2.5 years ago.  I really heard about it long before we even had a local CC community to participate in from a friend from Georgia whose daughters were enrolled there.  I was excited to actually be able to sit in on a Challenge A class today with my oldest to observe.  I am pleased with what I saw and heard there!

Students were participating in the discussion, giving answers for math equations and reading aloud their science reports on sharks.  They played a nerf gun math facts review game for multiplication facts that my children have already been learning for 3 years in Foundations!  It sure made the math seem less intimidating for me and my student.

My tutor friend showed me the geography quiz that the students were working on.  I liked that ability to make the geography quiz matching or multiple choice if the traditional fill-in-the-blank is not the best testing situation for my dyslexia, dysgraphic child.  It could also be done orally, pointing to a map.  Again, I was pleased that our children have already been memorizing quite a lot of the countries, states, capitals, and land features that they will be expected to learn in Challenge A.  I just love how the Foundations program has already given us so much to build upon in the Challenge programs!

Just monitoring the class this morning made me feel more able to take on the challenge of Challenge A!  The moms say the kids enjoy it and it's a fun transition from Foundations/Essentials into the Challenge program.  For those of us who have already been spending a few hours a day on normal school days, I don't think it will be an insurmountable task, but just another step up to higher expectations for this age and development level.  If you are considering homeschooling your children through Jr. High and High School, you may want to consider the CC Challenge program.  Parents are always the "teachers" of their children with all the responsibility and the decision making, but CC Challenge tutors are mentors who assist parents in guiding their children and in giving them a safe, classical, Christian environment where students can learn, grow, and thrive.  Visit a Challenge near you!