CC Memory Work Review Game Day!

I organized a fun Memory Work Review Game Day for our CC Community after we complete our first semester of Foundations classes.  It was a fun, positive day for all Foundations students to practice their memory work!

I grouped students together by age and ability into small groups of 3 or 4.  We had 7 stations, one for each subject of memory work.  A couple of the groups had a parent or older sibling travel with them the whole morning, while groups of older students moved fine on their own.  We only had time for about 15 minutes at a station, so this day was not about showing individual mastery of the memory work, but just a fun time to review.  Some games gave children turns to answer, but they could "phone a friend" to help them out and I saw them helping each other, which was really awesome!

Here are the activities that we enjoyed:

Geography - U.S. puzzles of the states and a game of matching the state to it's capital.

Math - younger kids rolled a dice and sang their skip counting songs, while older children reviewed  their math facts with a game of Speed.

Latin - a bean bag toss to match the Latin vocabulary with it's English meaning and then roll the dice for Weeks 9-12 to recite the Latin rules and John 1.

English - a parent brought in a battery operated game of ducks and you could pick up a duck and find the symbol on the back for Weeks 1-12 to recite the English.

Timeline  - we used mini-timeline cards sorted by week, but scrambled and the kids had to work together to place them in order, many were singing the timeline song.  :)

Science - Chutes and Ladders Science review was fun!

History - throw the "snowball" (cotton ball) into a numbered plastic cup to see which week you will recite, they could also listen to the history songs if needed.

The children were motivated by receiving a small, inexpensive prize at each station for participating and going through as much memory work as they could, and then I gave them a candy cane as their special prize at the end for completing all of the stations!  This really worked well, the kids enjoyed it and they were able to go to every station to review.

Now their parents have ideas of other ways to enjoy reviewing at home over our holiday break, too!

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!

CC Celebrations = Community!

It is now May and all of our End of the Year celebrations with our Classical Conversations community are almost over.  We have enjoyed another year immensely and have learned so much at the same time! One of the main reasons we joined a CC community was for (drum roll) - community!  Yes, we enjoy meeting regularly with new and old friends and learning together, so our string of celebrations at the end of the year reflect that need for community within our group.

Our community has celebrated for the whole month of April, it almost seems!  I  had the opportunity to organize a string intrument "Petting Zoo" with the Director of Education for our nearby Philharmonic Orchestra.  Many of the young children had never tried to play a stringed instrument and they were thrilled!  Moms who had never tried an instrument were also thrilled!  We also enjoyed a field trip to a local Philharmonic Orchestra for their Adventure Concert for school aged children and enjoyed hearing music from Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars, and other genres. 

In Essentials, we were able to host our first "Hall of History Wax Museum" at lunch during one of our community days and we had a great turnout of friends come through the wax museum.

Faces of History "Wax Museum"

In my last Essentials class as the tutor, we enjoyed sharing end of the year projects that we made to display later at our community End of the Year celebration.  We also enjoyed snacks and played Essentials Jeopardy with both classes together for a party atmosphere.

My kids and their Chart A cookie bar version

Then, we held our End of the Year Celebration for the whole community where we enjoyed a pitch-in meal and the final bridge-building and egg drop contests.  Then, we gathered to watch and listen to presentations from all of the classes from Challenge 1, B, A, Essentials, and Foundations.  Teens to tots performed and presented songs, chants, and skits to show what they have learned. 

Egg Drop Contest

The Girls' Masters class recited Latin and acted out a history sentence

The Boys' Masters class, my son is Pres. Bush sending troops to the Persian Gulf

After that, we hit a local roller skating rink for an End of the Year skating party and then the Foundations girls enjoyed a Spring Tea Party, hosted by the Challenge girls.

Roller Rink Fun!

We are extremely blessed by having a wonderful CC community!  Although we are starting a new CC community in our own town for next year, we are so pleased to be able to continue our connections and hope to do some of these fun events next year with our "sister community" that we started out in.  Classical Conversations is growing in our area and we want to share the blessings with others who have not yet had the opportunity to participate in such an awesome program!  As the year closes, I am happy, exhausted, and already starting to feel re-energized and excited to plan another year!

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?