Did Classical Conversations simplify your homeschool?

[Amy+2]

I am thinking of biting the bullet and joining, and, knowing the Hive is a plethora of knowledge on this subject, I thought I would ask this question here.

 

I don't want to complicate my homeschool any more than it already is.:tongue_smilie: I think I can see where using CC as your guide could potentially simplify the load by making it easier to put the focus on the Three R's, and letting the rest fall into place with weekly review and good read alouds, which, in all honesty, would restore peace and help with accountability for me.

 

Can it be this easy?!? What say the Hive?!?:bigear:

[FlutterbyMommy]

We are new to homeschooling, so we have done it from the start. I am not certain it would have simplified anything for us. It compliments what we do.

 

I would think it would depend on what you are doing for homeschool now and how you plan to use CC. It is a supplement, but perhaps it could take the place of certain subjects and it applies to children of multiple ages. In that way it might simplify things.

[Beth in SW WA]

I'm wondering the same thing.

 

If I do CC, I'll keep doing everything else as planned and do Foundations for supplementation and fun.

 

I'm curious what other CC'ers do..... :bigear:

[Jyniffrec]

:bigear:

[Heidi @ Mt Hope]

I think it is going to depend on HOW you use it. It will simplify things for me in the fall, because I have a baby due and we are going to use it as the bulk of our schooling. In January, though, I'm hoping it will complement what we are already doing.

 

For me, it fills in gaps that I feel are weaknesses in our homeschool. I posted about it here, if you're interested in more details.

 

I can't say for sure what it will do for us, though, since we haven't started, LOL!

[Amy+2]

Thanks for the link, Heidi!

 

When I read your reasons for doing it, I could totally relate. I really don't want to use it as a supplement. I want it to be the curricula (other than the 3R 's) that I follow and build upon at home. Is that even possible?

[i.love.lucy]

Amy, I think it's possible to have it be the backbone. I've studied a lot about this. I am also following an LCC approach mostly, so YMMV. I want to focus intensely on Bible, Math , Latin, and Lang Arts (writing, lit, grammar). By moving other things to more of a deeper once or twice a week sudy vs minimal daily study, I hope to achieve a lot. So history for me will be fleshed out based on the weekly sentence with SOTW material, other history encyclopedias I have, and lots of hist fiction reading. Same with science. Spanish might be daily as I find that fun, but their main bulk of lesson time will likely be weekly. Ditto for art and music appreciation. If you search for CC here or look at the CC social group you will find a wealth of info on how many of us plan to do this.

 

Good luck!!!

 

And Heidi, your 6 (or was it 7?) reasons for wanting to do CC were exactly my same reasons!! :D

[nknapp5]

Our plan is to start CC this year. My son just turned 6 (today) and I figure now when he is loving learning and taking everything in is the best time to start. As I am starting to get things together I am finding ways to incorporate CC w/ what is going to be our daily curiculum. Our director gave me a list of read-alouds to go with everything they will be going over in history and science for cycle 2. That helps me in the read-aloud part of my curiculum. For science last year I bought the SL science K and ended up not having the time to do any of it. With CC I'm assuming he'll be getting some science there (not a big deal to me at this age). Then the art factor helps me out b/c my DS has been asking for art projects besides here's some crayons draw me something. So I'm hoping CC will simplify my HS time and he'll get so much more out of the HS experience. Plus I feel CC will teach him to think and remember things for the long term, not just to pass a test. People just don't think, I have problems with it myslef! When trying to decide whether to do it or not the only downfall for us was the $. Then I realized this is their education and its important to me so we'll find a way to do it!

[Woodland_Mom]

Yes, I can say, CC has certainly simplified my homeschool (and I use it as an added extra to what we already do!)

 

1. CC provides is my memory work program. I do not have to think about what I should have my kids memorize, when they should memorize it, etc. It is a wonderful encouragement and motivatior to DO memory work and memroy work get's done in our house thanks to CC.

 

2. CC provides my kids with a weekly opportunity to present an oral "report" every week. They enjoy this public speaking opportunity and so do I. I usually have my kids present on something we're learning in our studies at home. This public speaking time that they do adds so much to their learning experience.

 

3. CC helps provides us with weekly science experiments and art activies. I center our science around what we're covering each year in CC. This works very well for our family. My kids end up memorizing lots of great informaiton through the CC program, they do weekly science experiments and then we do our own reading and science "stuff" at home. When things get hectic and we're not able to cover as much art or science at home, we still have CC to "fall back" on. My kids get far more science experiments and art activities than they would if it was solely on my shoulders.

 

4. The essentials program is great. This has certainly simplified language arts in our home. It keeps us on schedule, it keeps us writing, and it keeps us busy with meaty grammar assignments. The weekly class is very worthwhile and more fun/interesting than what I might do each week to cover grammar and writing. I also find that Essentials is a great motivator for my son to write well because they often read their papers in class.

[everlastingstarflower]

I'm wondering the same thing.

 

If I do CC, I'll keep doing everything else as planned and do Foundations for supplementation and fun.

 

I'm curious what other CC'ers do..... :bigear:

 

We joined CC last fall and used CC as a supplement to the curriculum that we had at home. I liked CC for several reasons:

1. all of my dc's memory work is taken care of through CC, which simplifies my life greatly

2. my dc had the opportunity to be in a classroom setting sitting under the authority of another teacher/tutor

3. I was able to meet with other like-minded hs-ing moms for wisdom, advice and commiseration, when needed ;)

4. my dc were able to make friends with other children and be spurred on in their little competitions....my dc are very competitive and they didn't want to be shown up by their classmates when it came time for review games, which means that they studied their memory work at home ON THIER OWN. :D

5. seeing that there are other families memorizing these vast amounts of information all at once made my dc think "this is normal" so they didn't complain about it...if I'd have tried to have them memorize over 400 pieces of information at home in a 24 week period I'd have almost had a mutiny on my hands...well, maybe a lot of groaning & complaining at the very least.

 

I know that there were other CCers who used Foundations as their core and then did supplementary things at home to "beef-up" what they were learning at CC but, I'm all for rigor and so we're doing our core curriculum at home and CC is our supplement. But, then again I'm only hs-ing two and most of the other moms at CC who were using it as their core had at least 2x's as many children as I have and/or they were expecting/just had another baby. I think that's the beauty of CC....the parent is still in charge of their dc's education and each family can tailor it to be what they want/need it to be for themselves. Even with the cost of the program and what we paid for our curriculum last year, we paid 1/3 the amount that we would have if we'd have sent them to a classical Christian or traditional Christian school. To me, CC is worth every penny for the value that both myself and my dc are getting out of it IMO.

[Amy+2]

Oh, you all, THANK you SO much for the responses! I truly appreciate them!!:)

 

I was leery as to whether or not I could actually count on CC to be the base of our curricula. My plan is to do English, Writing, Math and Bible as we have been and then to let CC guide the rest of our work. We will use SotW 2 and read alouds for history to dig deeper with the timeline and sentences in CC. As far as science goes, I hope the boys and I can feed off of the project from CC each week. Memory work will FINALLY get done. Whew! I have always wanted to do it, just never got to it. That leaves the art, music, geography and Latin which will truly be the icing on the cake! Once again, these are things I have hoped to incorporate consistently for a long time, and I think CC will keep me accountable. My goal is to implement CC to its fullest, not just let it fall by the wayside!:tongue_smilie:

When it all boils down to it, I just wanted to be sure that I wasn't out in LALA land with the thought that it could be what I need it to be for our family, which is the schedule we have never attained! ;)

[H_Household]

I think that I've learned so much about Classical Education in the last year....still learning....that I will do things very differently next year with my kids. We are in a CC group and last year it was more of a place for my kids to go and learn what they could get while there. But now as I'm understanding Classical Education more and loving it....I will use it more as my curriculum this year. I will do LA and Math at home but then use our CC work to bounce off at home for the other areas. I got a list of SOTW to use with the History sentences. We are studying Apologia Astromony this year to go with the science. I think that CC can be just something you do or the basis for your homeschool.....it depends on how you want to do it. It will make our homeschool better this year to fully buy in to the CC model and make CC part of our everyday. Good luck!

[Amy+2]

H_Household~

 

Your insight makes a lot of sense. Using CC for our memory work is my main goal, but I also think it needs to coincide with the history, science, etc., we are doing for the entire year. It would not make sense to just memorize all the info and not have anything relevant within our other work to enhance the memory work. I can't imagine NOT coordinating our studies to our memory work. To me, they go hand in hand. You're input was great! Thanks again!:)

 

BTW, May I ask where you found your list for SotW with CC history sentences? The idea of incorporating the two really intrigues me. I wasn't sure if I would use SotW with CC or move on to ToG.

[dsmama]

We will be starting CC in the fall as well, and I think it will add a level of interaction and accountability that we've been missing (we just finished our first year of homeschooling).

 

I, too, would love to see the connection between the history sentences and SOTW. I went through Paula's archive and found the VP cards and SOTW list, but to add the CC sentences would be awesome!!

[dsmama]

Just wanted to add -- I've seen where a CC community posted a page connecting Cycle 1 sentences and SOTW and VP cards. Does anyone know of a group that has done so yet for Cycle 2? (I'm in a new community and so we're still gathering materials).