So confused about how Classical Conversations works...

[vwsmith]

with your chosen curriculum.

 

I've been to their website, but find it gives me more questions than answers. I talked to someone at a recent conference but didn't have time to fully delve.

 

I have already chosen and purchased curriculum for my 6 year old (Ambleside Yr1, Singapore Math, Apologia Astronomy, Montessori Grammar, AAS 2/3).

 

Will this "jive" with CC or cause confusion? Is CC done independent of the other schooling you're doing at home? Should you be doing a strictly classical method at home for it to be the most useful?

 

And most importantly, is it something you find necessary? What I mean to say is, if you have your chosen curriculum and feel pretty confident everything will be covered by you, is there another reason to sign up with CC or will it be overkill?

 

3hrs is no a small amount of time and the tuition on top of regular curriculum purchases just makes me wonder if signing up is worth it.

 

Good & bad reviews welcome :)

[Tinkerbell]

I have a 5 year old, and we did CC last year and have registered again for this year. In the Foundations level, you will need to supplement CC with your own Math and Phonics/Reading. That's it. CC is not supposed to be done alongside another curriculum. They do not recommend adding anything else, unless you want to.... but keep in mind you could easily burn out your child with a lot of extras.

 

Foundations is the "grammar" stage - which means they will be mostly memorizing, memorizing, and memorizing. They are absorbing lots of facts that they will (hopefully) be able to pull from memory later on when they really need it. CC has a lot of fun songs to remember the history and math facts. They now have a timeline song that corresponds with the timeline cards.

They memorize facts in Math, History, Timeline, Latin, Science, English Grammar, and Geography. Each week at class, they do a science project and something related to the arts/music. Each child has to make a presentation to the class as well. It's also a great place to meet other homeschoolers and develop friendships.

 

CC is definitely a full curriculum and it moves very quickly. With my 5-year -old, we are not going to do much else besides CC, Bible, Math, and Reading. We spend about 30 minutes per day reviewing the memory work for the week. I have found that my son is much more motivated to learn the CC stuff because he wants to know all the answers for class the next week.

 

Hopefully that gives you an overview of what the program does. You will have to decide for yourself if it is something you want to add. Good luck!

Edited June 18, 2012 by Tinkerbell

[mrs.m]

First, have you read The Core? If you haven't, I suggest you pick it up and dive in. Leigh explains how all this can look in your homeschool plans. I don't follow The Core 100% but I move a bit closer each year.

 

Will this "jive" with CC or cause confusion? Is CC done independent of the other schooling you're doing at home? Should you be doing a strictly classical method at home for it to be the most useful?

 

We aren't fully classical in style. I'm probably a bit more traditional slowly transitioning into Classical. We have a lot of CM families in our group that seem to be making it work.

 

In general any confusion caused by memory work seems to be from the adult's need for everything to be in a certain order. We want history to be learned chronologically and we want the science to match up with what is being studied at home. What I have found, is that CC is most useful for memory work. Since it is 24 weeks, I rarely tie it in with what we are doing because it doesn't cover a full school year.

 

Think of it this way, if you go to a museum and they start talking about Abraham Lincoln and you are studying Ancient Egypt, are you concerned that your child will be confused? I believe most kids can understand that it is a different point on a timeline.

 

I have found the memory work to be really helpful for my rising 4th grader. I didn't have to spend any time on "to be verbs" in his grammar lesson because he already had them memorized. He jumped right into multiplication because of skip counting. I love when I see the dots connect in history over something that he has alread memorized.

 

And most importantly, is it something you find necessary? What I mean to say is, if you have your chosen curriculum and feel pretty confident everything will be covered by you, is there another reason to sign up with CC or will it be overkill?

 

 

 

I can't answer this for you. For my family the answer is that it is not overkill. I do know that my kids didn't retain much information before we started the CC memory work. So, if you have a way to build in that memory work, then you may find CC is not very useful. I also like the art and science experiments. I'm not great at doing those at home and I don't have kids that bug me to get around to this.

 

The community is very important for our family. In addition, I have a DD in the Challenge level and love where that is heading for her.

Edited June 18, 2012 by jannylynn

[bethben]

I did CC last year with a 4, 7, and 11 year old. With the 4 and 7 year old, I added literature reading, math, and language arts. It was enough for them. The problem was with the 11 year old. Just adding math and language arts for an 11 year old is short changing them in my opinion. They really need more at that age. The program is hard to fit into any kind of science sequence or history time period. The facts they learn are really random in their sequence (it's a planned random, but still random) so if you are trying to co-ordinate it with anything other than a mom-planned curriculum, you'll drive yourself nuts. Just consider CC (or your other curriculum) an add on and you'll find that you'll still have your sanity when the year is done. There are people who co-ordinate history and science with what they're memorizing at CC, but they just have way more energy than I could ever possess.

 

The 11 year old was bored and the 4 and 7 year old really looked forward to it each week. They really enjoyed it a lot. I really think the Foundations program works best with 5-9 year olds. It burned me out - just being gone a full day out of each school week having to do everything else for the rest of the 4 days made it too hectic for me. If I just had a pre-k and 1st grader, it would would have been a lot more doable.

 

Beth

[beth83]

The community is very important for our family.

 

:iagree:

 

I think it totally depends on what you want it to be for your family. We are choosing to participate for the social aspect it offers in an educational environment. Some follow it to a T and form their whole curriculum around CC, but we will have a full curriculum and be supplementing with CC. It will be a Friday activity for us, and we will occasionally listen to it in the car. Whatever my children pick up will just be a bonus to their weekly studies at home. I figure even if they pick up on bits and pieces, it won't hurt them when they study the topics in future years. It's all about placing pegs to later be drilled in. I know of many people who have done it this way, and it works for them.

 

I think it offers so much more than just memorizing, though. Our program also offers art and music exposure that we don't always get at home, as well as a science experiments. For some things that tend to get overlooked in crazy weeks, at least we will have CC that touches on the subject.