How does our KG and 2nd grade curriculum look? Should we join CC?

[mommydearest]

Any feedback is appreciated. Going round and round with our curriculum and wondering if I have it all covered, or maybe could be doing things differently. Also, would adding Classical Conversations to our schedule be too overwhelming?

2nd grade:

 

Language Arts- All About Spelling 2, Writing Strands 2/3, First Language Lessons 2, McGuffey Readers and books, books, books!

 

Math- Saxon 2

 

Science- NOEO Biology 1

 

History- SOTW 2

 

Art- Draw Write Now

 

Music- Piano lessons

 

PE- Basketball, Swimming, Gymnastics

 

 

 

Kindergarten:

 

Phonics/Reading: Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading, BOB books, and lots of reading!

 

Math: Saxon K (although I am considering switching to Saxon 1 after reading some posts on here)

 

Handwriting: HWOT K (we didn't really enjoy the pre-K version, but then we didn't do all the extras either)

 

I also have Writing Strands 1 and All About Spelling 1, but I don't know if this may be too much for KG.

 

She can be as involved as she'd like with SOTW, NOEO science, and Draw Write Now books. She will also be doing Gymnastics, and probably b-ball and piano too.

 

Don't want to over do it, but I do want to get things accomplished!

[Chris in VA]

I don't think it would be too much. It's a lot of memory work, but it's done in a really fun way, not just repetition or copywork.

[everlastingstarflower]

This is our first year "officially" homeschooling but, I wasn't totally convinced that I could homeschool without driving everyone insane until I learned about CC.

 

Have you been to an information meeting? If you haven't I suggest that you try one. I think that if the director of the CC in your area is able to do as good of a job as ours did, it will definitely help you decide if CC is right for your family.

 

Some parents use CC as a core course and then add other curriculum on while other parents have their own core curriculum and use CC as the add on. We are doing the latter. I know that SWB says that she didn't "do it all" in her book but I have a hard time not doing it all! :001_smile: It's all so much fun!

 

Anyway, I looked at what you've chosen for your curriculum and I think that it would definitely be do-able. We already purchased all of our curriculum and I've been doing it over the summer. The only subjects I'm not teaching at this time are math, health and science. My dh is going to teach health and science beginning September and Saxon Math can't be started until August because of the student meeting book. We finish in about 2 - 3 hours with the exception of reading. So, I feel confident that CC will be a great addition to what we're already doing but, I don't have to worry about organizing the memory work. Plus, it's great to have such a wonderful support group of other like-minded families to get to know. I'm so glad that we joined.

[enlarsh]

We'll be doing CC this year for my oldest in Kindergarten also. I'm excited to be a part of a like-minded group--that was my biggest reason for joining. I had planned on just doing classical on my own, but was thrilled to find it online while I was doing a google search for "classical curriculum kindergarten".

 

From what I understand, we can do as little or as much CC as we like. For my little guy, my plan is to expand on selected pieces of the timeline and geography and just focus on the memory work. The art and science is a great bonus too!

[hiveHolly]

I'm a newbie and though I have a feeling that replying to old posts is not the way to go, I would love to hear an update on your year of Kindergarten at Classical Conversations. Was it what you had hoped? Did you have time for all the memory work and phonics and math?

[lindsrae]

I don't think CC would be too overwhelming...but be prepared to "give up" that day as far as other lessons are concerned. We go on Mondays and stay for lunch and recess, so we don't get home until 1:30 usually. My Pre-K'er spends some time on art and listening to books on tape while my 2-year-old takes a nap. Then its off to ballet class for us!

[everlastingstarflower]

This was our first year with CC and homeschooling in general. My ds is in K and my dd is in 2nd grade. CC meets from 9AM-12PM and then we all stay for lunch and recess from 12PM-1PM.

 

My children love the interaction with their teacher/tutors and the other kids in the group. We have done a pretty good job of keeping up with it all especially since we used separate curriculum at home instead of using CC as the "main" curriculum and building off of that.

 

We try to review the new week's memory work every school day (not on weekends) and then go over the past 6 weeks worth of memory work once a week. Every so often, I have them do all of the memory work from the beginning just to make sure that they haven't forgotten any of it. If we have to travel somewhere, I take the memory cards and our CD along and we sing our memory work ad nauseam ad infinitum during our trip. It really helps to solidify the material in the kids' minds. The only exception is the history timeline. We try to do the timeline from the very beginning each school day.

 

The only thing that we're not doing is finding the locations on the map for the geography memory work. This year, we just memorized the location names. For me, the most challenging thing is finding the time to do the map locations. Since we were new to everything, I decided to skip it. I have sometimes regretted it since my kids have done so well they would have been able to go for memory masters if I would have had them finding the locations from the beginning. Now it's just too much to try and go back and learn it all just so they could test for MM.

 

This summer, I'm hoping to get Cycle 2 cards and start to learn the locations over the summer when we will be having a lighter load. It will help me to ease into it more so that when we have a full curriculum load, it won't be so hard for me to delegate time to geography because I'll be used to incorporating it by that time.

 

The great thing is that next cycle, the kids have the same history timeline and the same math skip counting facts so they should have an easier time of it next year as long as we keep going over this cycle's materials over the summer.

 

CC took a great load off of me because now I don't have to worry about coming up with all this great memory work by myself, the kids have a great time and I get to interact with other moms and find new ways of making our homeschool even better. I'd highly recommend it. It has been a lifesaver for us! :)