CC is starting in my community...

[Beth in SW WA]

I can do Foundations on Wed mornings with my girls and still have plenty of time during the week for all our other subjects.

 

Right? :)

 

I would love to hear your CC stories -- the good, the bad and the ugly.

 

Thanks!!

[yvonne]

CC Foundations is what the parent wants to make of it. We did it last year for the first time. I joined knowing I wanted it to be an 'extracurricular,' something on the side. We did CC on Fridays, spent maybe an hour during the week prepping for my three children's oral presentations, spent maybe an hour total while we were in the car listening to the memory work cd & reviewing, and that was it for CC work. My children did like to read the backs of many of the VP history cards, and they also liked to quiz each other with the memory flash cards. They did these things on their own time. I didn't require, or even suggest, that they do it.

 

Some parents do use CC Foundations as more of a spine for their science, history, & geography studies. I ended up using it as a spine for science the second semester. I put together a science book basket, based on the CC science topics for a three week period at a time. I scheduled 30 minutes, 4 days/week for the kids to read whatever they wanted from that basket. They didn't have to read a book start to finish. They could jump around within a book or to a different book. They could just read the picture captions in a book. Whatever. Some days I'd give them a "Find out all you can about x" challenge. Some weeks we'd get together and try to put together everything we'd each read on a topic in outline form. That was useful. Anyhow, it was the very best science we've done so far. The kids enjoyed it and they learned way more than they had with any check-the-box science curriculum. (Makes me want a re-do so I can implement more of a CM approach in science!)

 

The bottom line is that you can use it however you like. The tutors do tons of review games in class, so the kids will pick up most memory work in class. If you reinforce it a little during the week, it's amazing how much sticks!

 

yvonne

[VA6336]

I agree with the previous poster who said that Foundations is what you make of it at home. We do a middle-of-the-road review, spending 15-30 minutes every other day. We do listen to it in the van a few times a week (10-15 minutes at a time). Some families spend way more (30 mins a day) and some don't review at all. I think it would be kind of silly to do Foundations and not reinforce it at home at all...the point is putting the facts in their long-term memory banks so they have a framework to put information in as they learn "other" subjects. Even my little ones can do a lot of independent review now that they are reading.

[Ellie]

Anything in the morning would be a killer for *me*.

[Woodland_Mom]

We love CC here! We're getting ready for our 4th year! Many families in our group use CC as the core of their schooling, adding math, lots of living books to bring history and science alive and plenty of great literature.

 

CC is a supplement to our schooling, so we spend about 15-20 minutes each morning doing our memory work. When we're finished, we move on to our regular "stuff".

 

CC keeps enables me to cover MUCH more memroy work than I would on my own. The program also gurantees that my kids will get art and science experiments every week--two things that are sometimes hard make happen for homeschoolers.

 

CC is fun, highly educational, and adds so much to our homeschool journey. I can't imagine our weeks without it.

[Beth in SW WA]

Thank you for your responses! :001_smile:

 

Anyone else want to chime in?

[crazyforlatin]

All this raving about CC has me rethinking our homeschooling approach (aaak!). If there are no classes in our area, is it possible to use the Foundations Curriculum Guide for $50 and apply some of the benefits of CC? We use SOTW and Henle already; for memory work, will the Guide provide all the content for memorization or do I really need those flashcards?

 

 

ETA: Sorry Beth, I think I posted in the wrong thread.

[hsmomto5]

I am going to be a new director because all of the other communities around us are full. Our new start up group is now almost full! That is how popular this program is.

I am not sure how it will all play out in our homeschool since this is our first year. I am planning on using it as sort of a spine for history and science. I love the VP cards so that part is easy. We will have memory practice everyday.

As far as doing it at home, some people do. I just really wanted the accountability and social time for my kids. You will have to purchase the VP cards with the curriculum guide. The history cards are only listed by number since they are copyrighted.

Let me know if you any more specific questions.

Lora in NC

[crazyforlatin]

I am going to be a new director because all of the other communities around us are full. Our new start up group is now almost full! That is how popular this program is.

I am not sure how it will all play out in our homeschool since this is our first year. I am planning on using it as sort of a spine for history and science. I love the VP cards so that part is easy. We will have memory practice everyday.

As far as doing it at home, some people do. I just really wanted the accountability and social time for my kids. You will have to purchase the VP cards with the curriculum guide. The history cards are only listed by number since they are copyrighted.

Let me know if you any more specific questions.

Lora in NC

 

Thank you for taking the time to reply. At least I now have a starting point of the essential materials to buy. I may have to end up being director to have a CC group here :tongue_smilie:. I'm going to take a look at the VP cards and will probably have to post a couple of more questions. I like the idea of having social time with kids who are also studying the same rigorous curriculum. When you say accountability, does that mean handing in homework to the teachers and getting grades?

[hsmomto5]

You can pm me if you would like information on becoming a director. I would be more than happy to help you out.

Lora in NC

[monalisa]

We did it last year. My dd 7 enjoyed it, and loved esp. the history. It was a killer to get there on Mondays at 9, and we were too exhausted by the time it was over to do much of anything else (which was 1pm because we had duties to do after lunch; this wasn't optional) . For me, it wiped out the rest of the day. I didn't like feeling like I had only 4 days to do other things, including field trips. I know other people use the afternoon for library runs, errands etc. I was never organized enough to do this consistently, esp. with it being on a Monday. And there was NO WAY dd was going to come home and do any more school work -- she was just too worn out.

 

I am tempted to do it again because my dd liked it, and I did like the comraderie of the other moms (although I realized it really WASN"T a truly classical community -- so many people in my campus didn't have a clue about classical & think CC is the be all, end all of how to do classical ed). But I don't think we ever will do it again because it just took too much time out of the week for the other things I want to do. Yes, it is only 24 weeks and theoretically you have 12 other weeks for field trips etc. (I know people will say this in response to me saying it takes too much out of the week) but for me, that's most of the core of the year. When Easter rolls around, I want to feel almost done with everything.

 

Here's the ugly: There were problems on our campus with discipline (major chaos, no discipline expectations in place and we had some really wild kids esp. from one family), inequality of jobs (some moms seemed to do no cleanup etc which was infuriating to me), and frankly, I disliked sitting there for 3 hours every week during the class. Also, we had no nursery, so having littles in the room made it insanely crazy some weeks. I did like most of the art (except the drawing -- not worthwhile) and composers, and most of the science experiements. Tin Whistle was a joke, at least in my dd's class ( I truly do not think it is worth any time having a tutor who has no musical training to be trying to teach tin whistle). All of this really depends on the personality of the campus, and the personality of the individual tutor and her teaching skills. I question whether they are really trained adequately for what they are expected to do (esp. with classroom management).

 

Bottom line for me is that w/ a whole day devoted to CC, I did NOT feel like I had enough time for all the other subjects PLUS field trips etc that I really wanted to do. I felt like I was always behind those other 4 days. For the $, it just wasn't worth it for us. I did not use it as a spine, however, for me it was just a supplement. I'm doing the audio CD's at home this year. My dd will instead be doing a non-academic enrichment program that meets 2x/month which I think will be a lot better for our family.

[leseve]

We did CC last year and loved every minute of it. I loved it being on Monday so we started our week off strong. Like others said, I liked the accountability of it all too. In Foundations, there isn't homework to turn in, but the kids do a short presentation each week and reviewed what they had learned the week before. You do get out of it what you put into it. We used it for our core curriculum last year (4 yo, 1st grader, and 4th grader) and I liked that they were all learning the same things each week, making it easier on me ;) We used SOTW and other resource books and got a bag of books from the library each week on that week's topics. My oldest did Essentials too, which took more time and did have a paper to turn in each week (not really turn in, but read it aloud each week so it had to be done). The accountability there was priceless - you can't beat good old fashioned peer pressure to make your paper the best. If only I was reading his papers, he wouldn't care nearly enough, but with friends listening, he stepped it up a notch (yay).

 

While my oldest and I were in Essentials (I tutored it, actually), the younger two participated in awesome enrichment classes. They got art, music, PE, photography, etc each week - love that!! Each campus is different on their afternoon schedule but at ours, even if you didn't have siblings in Essentials, you could join in the enrichment classes. Then, maybe you wouldn't feel like you wasted an afternoon.

 

The friends we made and information we learned was well worth giving up one of our normal school days. The kids and I loved it and can't wait to start up again in the fall.

[Beth in SW WA]

After lots of prayer and research, I registered for CC. :001_smile:

[EJCMom]

After lots of prayer and research, I registered for CC. :001_smile:

 

Maybe I'll see you there next year. LOL! I want to wait until all of my kids are a year older. I'll be interested to hear how you like it. :001_smile:

[Tam101]

What is CC? And can you post a link or PM me (I'm in SW WA too).