classical conversations question

[sunshineslp]

hello guys, i haven't been around in a long while but i missed the awesome topics here so i came back:)  i have a question about CC.  this is our first year in the books, in Foundations, and my kids have all loved it.  me however, i love what my kids are learning but i can honestly say i don't "enjoy" it like i hoped.  i think i get bogged down in the memory part and don't find it as enjoyable as when we did MFW.  i find myself missing those MFW days.  and before you say it, no, we can't do both:)  i cannot afford both.  but i wondered if i was alone?  did anyone feel this way about CC?  my kids do like it, and i am considering doing it next year because it has been the only thing they have really loved (co-op speaking).  i just miss the fun of MFW.  maybe i am doing something wrong with CC!  i may even tutor next year... maybe that will help with getting me more involved with the curriculum and loving it?  i don't know.  just wanted to see what you all had to say:) 

[YodaGirl]

*sigh* Oh, how I wish that CC had worked for us, but then again, I'm kind of glad it didn't. 

The memory work was great...in theory. My youngest did really well, but my oldest did not. I did a better job reviewing memory work at home when I was a Foundations tutor.  

I think science is lacking.  Next year will be cycle 1, and the history sentences will be organized by region as opposed to chronologically. After 2 years in Essentials, my oldest scored mid-grade level on the language portion of her end-of-year testing (for reference, she scored upper middle-upper high school on her other subjects). It's obviously not working for us, even though she has had wonderful tutors. I'm not a huge IEW fan, either. 

My youngest loved the community aspect.  My oldest made a couple of friends, but there was a clique that was allowed (and encouraged) to exclude kids.  It ultimately wasn't a good environment. 

I *love* being able to pick my own materials and adjust when necessary. CC, especially at Challenge level, does not lend itself to that easily. I'm SO excited about going back to doing our own thing. I realized that I was paying a bunch of money for little turn-out.  We can get interaction through any number of co-ops that cost way less.

Long story short, I don't think you're doing anything wrong with CC.  It sounds like CC just doesn't work for you. It's okay to like the idea of something and not like it in practice for your family. ?

[2_girls_mommy]

I always thought it was way too much for the elementary years. I thought I can pay a lot less and do WTM work at home and join other co-ops (designing and teaching WTM style classes that I want to teach and including others so that my kids had community,) so that is what I did. I thought, "I will look into CC in the older years. It is too much money for just memory work in the elementary years, when I am paying for all of the books and doing all of the teaching myself anyway." But as the kids got older, and I looked back into it, I realized it is still way too much money and no teaching. The tutors don't teach the lessons. The kids do the lessons at home, so I am still teaching or they are self teaching, then they go and "discuss" the lesson after it is done. What if they didn't get it, and need someone to teach it to them? Too bad. They have to move onto the next lesson the next week. And I have to figure out how to teach it. Also, they have to stay on that schedule for everything. So I would lose so many of the benefits of homeschooling. We can't do a semester of a science fair unless it the year that CC has them doing a science fair project. We can't do a semester of Robotics when a space opens on a team in place of science if doing CC. We can't take advantage of opportunities (of which there are so many times we have decided to enter an art or essay contest and our LA was writing that essay for a week instead of our textbooks and things like that) because they are behind their classmates and not ready for that test. So again, I would be paying all of that money, plus buying books, plus doing all of the teaching without any of the flexibility. It doesn't line up to me. I teach classical ed at home, outsource specific classes where I need a real teacher (not one tutor for all subjects at a high school level. Who can master Latin, Chemistry, literature, and all of it????) and do other homeschool groups or co-ops for enrichment and extras. My kids have had PE, journalism, art, science labs, etc. at co-ops. I pay for music lessons and dance classes (more community!) And I teach in my home to groups of kids when we want to study for something specific like the National Latin Exams. 

[jens2sons]

I think we all feel this way towards the end of the school year.  I came from using Sonlight and have often thought of scrapping CC and going back.  What has made me decide to stay is that I evaluate what we have learned in CC vs the effort I have to put forth in using Sonlight (or any other curriculum).  I never have time to complete what is in the teachers guides.  With CC, all we have to do is gather books from the library (book basket) and go through our weekly memory work.  There are lots of extras you could add to get that MFW feeling in CC.  Just check out CC Connected and halfahundredacrewood.com .  If you are missing MFW, all you have to do is have the kids notebook and do a few projects on the side.  You can use the same books they sell while staying on track with CC. There is no need to buy the curriculum set and add the stress of an additional teachers guide.  One thing that has been easy to add for history is the SOTW audio cds.  The kids love the activity guides!

I have looked and looked for a good alternative to Essentials and I just can’t find one.  Essentials work is rushed, but if you go to a traditional English grammar course, after being in Essentials, it is difficult to slow down and do the course work.  I tried and then decided “ain’t nobody got time for that!”  Besides, we’ve put so much time and effort in to the Essentials program.  I have a friend that is an author and took Latin in highschool.  She placed her boys in Essentials this year and told me that the way that CC teaches English grammar is an excellent preparation to learning Latin.  She actually told me that she wishes her school had taught her the way the CC Essentials program teaches grammar.  She did however say that some of the writing taught in IEW is not necessarily what an editor would accept.  I think it’s just a way to get kids writing easily without tears.  In Challenge, CC changes to a different curriculum so I’m not all that concerned.  IEW works for my son for now.

For science, there is an excellent curriculum for older grammar stage kids called God’s Design by Answers in Genesis.  You can purchase 1 topic at a time and correlate it to the science portion of CC.  We used it this year and my son so far really likes it.  It’s not long winded and has short chapters.  I actually think CC should team up with AIG for this additional resource like they do with SOTW.  All this is extra though.  The kids can just notebook using their CC science cards just as easily and read books from the library.  

The freedom you get to choose in CC for the most part is great.  It is rushed, but if you look back to your childhood, most things you remember are the songs and chants that we learned in those early years.  

[sunshineslp]

1 hour ago, jens2sons said:

I think we all feel this way towards the end of the school year.  I came from using Sonlight and have often thought of scrapping CC and going back.  What has made me decide to stay is that I evaluate what we have learned in CC vs the effort I have to put forth in using Sonlight (or any other curriculum).  I never have time to complete what is in the teachers guides.  With CC, all we have to do is gather books from the library (book basket) and go through our weekly memory work.  There are lots of extras you could add to get that MFW feeling in CC.  Just check out CC Connected and halfahundredacrewood.com .  If you are missing MFW, all you have to do is have the kids notebook and do a few projects on the side.  You can use the same books they sell while staying on track with CC. There is no need to buy the curriculum set and add the stress of an additional teachers guide.  One thing that has been easy to add for history is the SOTW audio cds.  The kids love the activity guides!

I have looked and looked for a good alternative to Essentials and I just can’t find one.  Essentials work is rushed, but if you go to a traditional English grammar course, after being in Essentials, it is difficult to slow down and do the course work.  I tried and then decided “ain’t nobody got time for that!”  Besides, we’ve put so much time and effort in to the Essentials program.  I have a friend that is an author and took Latin in highschool.  She placed her boys in Essentials this year and told me that the way that CC teaches English grammar is an excellent preparation to learning Latin.  She actually told me that she wishes her school had taught her the way the CC Essentials program teaches grammar.  She did however say that some of the writing taught in IEW is not necessarily what an editor would accept.  I think it’s just a way to get kids writing easily without tears.  In Challenge, CC changes to a different curriculum so I’m not all that concerned.  IEW works for my son for now.

For science, there is an excellent curriculum for older grammar stage kids called God’s Design by Answers in Genesis.  You can purchase 1 topic at a time and correlate it to the science portion of CC.  We used it this year and my son so far really likes it.  It’s not long winded and has short chapters.  I actually think CC should team up with AIG for this additional resource like they do with SOTW.  All this is extra though.  The kids can just notebook using their CC science cards just as easily and read books from the library.  

The freedom you get to choose in CC for the most part is great.  It is rushed, but if you look back to your childhood, most things you remember are the songs and chants that we learned in those early years.  

 

 

this is so true!  thank you for helping me to see things clearly.  because i do think you are correct.  i just feel burnt out.  making a change might not be what we really need... i might just need a break, lol!

[Itsnotasprint]

We did CC for three years, two in a community.  After we left it was so nice to choose our own books and delve into topics we wanted. We had been told by the director that Foundations all by itself was enough. In hindsight, it wasn't enough for our family.  I look back at all the money we spent on it and we could have gotten so much more curriculum and joined a different co-op for the social interaction the kids love.  I also love to read good books to the kids but that got set aside to practice the memory work. 

[sunshineslp]

On 5/18/2018 at 3:27 PM, Itsnotasprint said:

We did CC for three years, two in a community.  After we left it was so nice to choose our own books and delve into topics we wanted. We had been told by the director that Foundations all by itself was enough. In hindsight, it wasn't enough for our family.  I look back at all the money we spent on it and we could have gotten so much more curriculum and joined a different co-op for the social interaction the kids love.  I also love to read good books to the kids but that got set aside to practice the memory work. 

 

 

yes, this is how i feel right now...

[Another Lynn]

I always thought of CC as an add-on, not the back bone of our studies.  The thing it did best was provide community we were unable to find anywhere else.  For some of my kids the memory work was great (for others - meh).  The presentations were a good experience.  The science demonstrations and art introductions just took a few more things off my plate at home.  But I never thought of it as our core study.  

[Carolinagirl1]

We've done 4 years of Foundations and 1 year of Challenge A. From the start I've been ambivalent about it. I love picking out my own curriculum so I used CC as a supplement. That worked until Challenge A. Our first year of homeschooling, we did a co-op on Friday afternoons that had rotating classes depending on what the parents felt like teaching. It was a great social experience, and looking back, I can see the value, but at the time I felt it wasn't consistent because the classes were just random from semester to semester. Knitting, cooking, painting, etc. I wanted something social, but consistent, with a classroom setting, where they could do the projects so I didn't have to do them at home. CC fit that bill. 

For some people, CC is the spine and they add books, history lessons, etc based on what they learned at CC that week. For me, I needed a more stable history curriculum and nothing followed the random history sentences closely enough (maybe in Cycle 3 - US History, but no other cycles). So I did SOTW and the Veritas Press for history. Science seemed random, so I did BJU for Science. I just didn't feel comfortable using CC as a stand alone. We did listen to the memory work CDs over and over in the car and they learned so much from them, but they supplemented what we were studying at home. 

By the time my older daughter started Challenge A, we had all of our tried and true curriculum in place, and to try to switch to using only their curriculum was a disaster. There was no history other than reading some historical fiction, the science was learning about an animal classification and picking an animal from that class to draw and research, a science fair project, and drawing and labeling the human body systems, there was Latin (which was not the curriculum I would've picked), map drawing and labeling the countries and capitals from memory, and more. My point is that although it was good in so many ways (and we decided not to go past ChA, so I don't know what would have evolved past that), I had my own curriculum in place that I loved and trusted more than I trusted what my daughter was learning. 

So, with all that being said, my ideas for:

Foundations:

Pros: Social, Consistent, Classroom setting experience, memory work helps with all other subjects, Presentation/Public Speaking experience, Science Projects I might not do at home, Art and Music Appreciation, Geography and map drawing is awesome, social outlet for parents

Cons: Content can be random, I feel there are gaps, wouldn't use it as sole learning or might find ourselves behind in certain subjects, felt a little Kool-aid-ish/cultish.

Essentials: Was awesome. I wouldn't hesitate to do Essentials again. So much to learn about sentence structure, awesome math games, and it is the best thing to happen to us as far as writing curriculum is concerned.

Challenge A:

Pros: Full Curriculum if this is the curriculum you choose, Map drawing and memorization, Science fair project experience, good literature and essays based upon that literature, rhetoric, awesome discussions and deeper thought. 

Cons: I felt it was lacking in History and some in science. I would've chosen different foreign language curriculum, does not include any English grammar - only Latin (I felt we still needed English grammar after only 2 years of Essentials).

I know this is long, but the short end of it is that I loved the social aspects, memory work, presentation experiences, geography, and essentials program. I am too much of a curriculum junkie and a control freak to let it dictate my curriculum though.

 

[Loolamay]

It's not just the curriculum that I could critique, but I truly believe issues with the business add to the burnout.

I'm part of a group on Facebook that often talks about this stuff. There are very happy CCers in there and some ex CCers who feel like they left a cult. It runs the gamut, but it's good info.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2135913039963411/

[AmandaVT]

On 5/21/2018 at 7:09 AM, Another Lynn said:

I always thought of CC as an add-on, not the back bone of our studies.  The thing it did best was provide community we were unable to find anywhere else.  For some of my kids the memory work was great (for others - meh).  The presentations were a good experience.  The science demonstrations and art introductions just took a few more things off my plate at home.  But I never thought of it as our core study.  

 

This is how we used CC this year. We hadn't found a group of homeschoolers until CC started and DS loved the social piece each week. He really grew and thrived and it was a wonderful opportunity for him. The academics were secondary, or even third on the list. If I find another coop or homeschooling group that would be as good a fit, I'd switch, but, I'll stick with it for now.