If you are involved in a Classical Conversations community please post.

[Leonor]

What program are you involved in Foundations, Essentials, Challenge?

 

What has been your experience like?

 

Do you use this as a co-op or do you use the program as a full curriculum and only follow up at home with the same materials? OR could you use your own approach at home -- unit study or TOG or Sonlight for the same material or time in history----or would that be too much?

 

Any information you can share would be helpful.

 

Thanks for posting.

[TXMomof2]

We use it as a supplement. We're on the 4 year cycle too, but some things do overlap. This year the Human Body went well with our home studies. Next year the memory work for earth science will compliment.

 

I usually review the CC memory work as I'm preparing breakfast each morning. HTH

[maryanne]

We have just finished our third year in Foundations. I use the material as a supplement to our regular curriculum at home. I know some moms use it as their main outline adding resources from the library to flesh out the memory work, but I like to have curriculum that is more planned out than that. I just choose curriculum for each subject (LA, Math, History & Science) that works for us and add in the CC memory work in addition to our regular curriculum.

 

Next year will be our first experience with Essentials, so I'm not quite sure what to expect yet. I'm holding off on purchasing any grammar and writing curriculum until I see whether I need to add anything to Essentials. Many say that it is enough, so I will wait and see.

 

Maryanne

 

ds-9 R&S Grammar, SL Core 3, Saxon, God's Design Science, Classical Conversations

dd-6 WP LA, Singapore Math, misc History & Science, Classical Conversations

[Woodland_Mom]

My family has been involved in Classical Conversations for 2 years. My oldest does Foundations and Essentials. My youngest only does Foundations, but gets to be in a really fun art class that our campus hosts in the afternoon. I am starting a Challenge A level for the 2009 - 2010 school year, so we'll also add that layer soon!

 

We use CC to supplement what we do at home. I don't think you can beat the memory work! The science experiments and fine art activities are very nice, too.

[Sara in WA]

Finished our first year in the foundation's level. I'm excited at what my kids learned. The memory work, fine arts and science experiments were a great thing to do regularly with accountability of a weekly meeting. This was in addition to our other school work; however, I reduced my expectations for what would be accomplished during the week since the CC class was exhausting for my kiddos (they are on the young side). We did SOTW this year - listening to a chapter on CD, map work and coloring page. Sometimes extra reading and activities.

 

Next year I want to try expanding on the CC material and using it as our spine for history, science and fine arts. We'll do our own language arts. I found a great blog where a gal creates and shares (how generous!) curriculum plans based on the CC cycle. I'm interested in this. The link to the blog is http://www.theten0clockscholar.blogspot.com/

[Krista in LA]

We are just finishing up our first year of it with Challenge B. At that level, I would say it's pretty complete although not necessarily what I would choose if I was doing it on my own. We actually opted out of the math since they use Saxon and did it on our own. I found it somewhat of an odd mix of some things being very easy like their reading selections, and some being harder like doing Introductory Logic and Intermediate Logic all in one year. Oh, and we didn't like the Latin's Not So Tough after doing LCI last year, so we dropped that the second semester and went back to LCII since it was a better fit for us. Overall, I like the program and it accomplished much of what I wanted it for - experience sitting in a classroom and being responsible for getting homework done each week as my dd is planning on going to high school next year. That said, I think I'm too independent to do programs like this.

[FLJen]

We've done Foundations and Essentials, and consider Foundations a supplement. Essentials was our only grammar and writing program this year. You could easily use TOG, or Sonlight in addition, if you considered it to be a memory-work co-op only. We're considering something like this for the upcoming year.

 

CC has great hands-on science and art projects each week, which is one of my favorite things. And I really appreciate the accountability and opportunity to fellowship with other moms.

[midwestbelle]

I do not use the CC work as our spine at home and it has worked out great for us. As we cover things in our curriculum at home, we will come across something that was a history sentence, science question or timeline card and they get all excited and say "we know about that" - and start reciting what they've memorized about it - it really makes the memory work come alive and hleps them make connections. A few weeks ago in CHOW we read about the French Revolution and the date coordinated with our history sentence about George Washington becoming the first President in 1789. DD8 immediately made the connection and we were able to talk about Lafayette coming over to help with our Revolution and going home to fight in his own. Same thing when we come across stuff in CC that we've already studied at home. I think it's a great way to reinforce what we're learning. SWB talks about setting "memory pegs" in their minds and I can see it working through our CC work. Another plus has been when we visit museums and they recognize something we've memorized and can talk about it.

 

Plenty of parents use the CC work for their spine, but I like a curriculum that is put together and comes in a nice little (or not so little) box. We have been using Sonlight, but are switching to HOD for next year. We are also starting Essentials next year with my older 2, so I'm not sure about adding any extra LA yet.

 

HTH

[lauracolumbus]

We went to an open house when there were only 6 sessions left this year and ended up joining. My 3 kids were in Foundations and they absolutely loved it. It was hard on me b/c I didn't want to make it our spine. I already have way too much on my shelf waiting to be used. I think next year I'll try to find a way to integrate it better, but will pretty much use it as an 'extra.'

 

Laura

[NCMom]

We (just yesterday) completed our first year of CC. I had one in Foundations and Essentials and one in Challenge B.

 

It was great experience and we all made new friends. We've done a lot of other co-ops, but this was the one I enjoyed the most. I think the thing that was the most different was that the majority of people there truly desire a rigorous education and want to make the most of any educational opportunities available for their children. Certainly that has not been the case with other co-ops we have done.

 

I tutored Foundations and Essentials. Both classes had stronger and weaker points, but I will say that, imho, people who used CC as their spine seemed to have an easier time of it. I think it was easier for their kids because they were not learning the memory facts in isolation, iykwim. But we had people there who did K12, TOG and other full curriculum also, that were well pleased doing both.

 

Challenge B also had things that we liked and things we disliked. I think the most successful students there were the ones whose parents realized that they are still the primary teacher. Some of the parents seemed to think that the tutor was going to cover everything in 6 hours and then the kid was to be independent the rest of the week. NOT true! We had a majority of kids that were coming out of schools in that class, i.e. first year hsers, so it was very hard for the parents to get out of that mindset.

 

Still my kids loved it, I liked it and they learned a LOT, both at CC and with the other stuff we did at home. And we finally met some people on the same wavelength, lol...

 

hth,

Georgia (beginning to prep for tutoring Challenge I next year;))

[mom2g2b]

Hi Georgia,

I'm looking for a challenge 1 program for next year. I'm going to pm you.

 

Vickie

[Guest kerry_tenoclockscholar]

I found a great blog where a gal creates and shares (how generous!) curriculum plans based on the CC cycle. I'm interested in this. The link to the blog is http://www.theten0clockscholar.blogspot.com/

 

Hey, Sara in WA! Thanks for your sweet comments! Yup, that is my little bloggity blog.

 

I am planning on doing these lesson plans to go along with Classical Conversations again for Cycle 1 (this year's cycle). Anyone interested can come on by! I hope to have the history one ready to share in May and the science one soon after. (I am catching up on school we missed during an adoption trip this spring. We've been home a month with our new daughter!)

 

The original post in this thread was about personal experiences with classical. You might be interested in this post on my blog: 5 Questions about Classical Conversations Answered.

 

Have a lovely day!