I did crazy-long posts two years ago after I got a
zillion questions at the Home school conference about Classical Conversations. I
re-read those, and over all am not sure they were too helpful. I am about to go to another Home school
conference where so many people overseas now do CC, so I cannot wait to see the
way others implement it in their homes.
Because really CC is whatever you want it to be. To a
point. You still have to trust the process and implement the process (review),
which early on is quite easy. It just sounds hard. Get the needed resources from the website and dive in, tweak your schedule, nuance it a bit, but not too much, and have fun.
It is a little like a new language-learning program.
David helped arrange (every lesson needed!) and implement a way to learn a
second/third language, it took discipline, time, and following the method
(designed by SIL guy, Greg Thompson). Everyone
wanted to do it. A few weeks in for some, months in for others people started
complaining a bit. ‘It didn’t work for me’. Well, did you do ‘this and this and
this’ like it was laid out? Uh, no, we didn’t do that….or that….or that. Hmmm…..didn’t trust the method, didn’t
implement it like it was intended. You actually didn’t do the program at all,
you nuanced it too much (like dieting, that ‘doesn’t work’). For those who did,
NO complaints, all David got were huge thanks for all the up-front leg-work.
For CC, the leg-work is all done. If you want to follow a
classical method of educating your children, and in the early years (grammar
stage) need to know what memory work to do, then do this. And it really is more
than memory work, especially if you are in a CC community, which we have never
been. Even with being the loners that we
are, I trust the method and implement the review and have seen great dividends,
but I think the pay-off is still farther out, since my kids are so little.
If you love what you are doing in HS, then don’t quit and
start CC just ‘because everyone else is’.
I am learning to stay confident in my HS choices (a mantra David sings
to me over and over again when I want to veer). Three years ago I didn’t know anyone overseas
doing CC or Right start math, I loved both. At the conference of over 300
people, I met three people doing it. It
is okay to love what you are doing even if no one else is doing it.
Some people (myself included perhaps) get overly excited
and speak like CC is the end-all. It is not. However, I have never met someone
who has done it and not liked it or not gotten great benefits from it. Now, MANY
overseas folks, and thousands stateside do ‘CC’. And unlike my previous language/diet analogy,
as someone NOT in a CC community, you can eliminate or focus less on whatever
parts you choose.
Ways it has enriched our HS the past 3 years?
·
Real life: I thought the science would be
applied in like three years. But at five-years-old on the beach, when looking
at a jelly-fish, Sophia sang the ‘major groups of invertebrates’ song, had
found one and knew which category it was.
·
All of science: with hands on experiments, a few
fun supplements, the exposure to how
life works and how God made things has been incredible. It has been fun and
able to be learned in-context most of the time. We are now on the atom,
elements and chemistry, something that they will not understand fully right
now. But it just added on to cycle 2 ‘states of matter’ song which they know
and somewhat understand.
·
Bella, at three could sing the U.S. presidents
song, which will come in handy later
·
Vocab: at three and a half singing through the
timeline song, we got questions, ‘isolation’ being one of them. What does that
mean? I explain, and explain. She asked every time. Bella now knew what that word meant. Tobin, almost 4 yo, now does this.
·
History sentence. We do SOTW for our deeper
history study, separate from CC. But when we get to someone or something that I
know we have a sentence for, we sing it, or they do without my prompting, and
now we can put that memory work in context again. (Hanging things on the pegs
of memory work over and over again)
·
Math: skip counting, so helpful at ages 3, 4, 5,
so when they get to those tables in real Math, like our 7 yo right now, it is
quite a bit easier. Some of the math I have not reviewed nearly as much.
Honestly, when in the kitchen, I sing the tsp/TBS/oz song to help me convert!
·
Geography, an immense blessing to continue see
where things are in our world, and put it on the map! I hope to get into better
implementing of actual drawing from memory and placement as they get a little
older.
·
Latin, simple pegs, I am trusting the method on
this, I know it will be helpful when we study Latin formally.
·
English: my most unexpected pay-off. Memorizing
the English grammar has helped so much as we have gotten into more formal
grammar study in the Phonics Road (which also has great rule tunes)
·
Timeline, kids love it and learn from it
continually.
·
Fine Arts and Science: for things that get
thrown out the window so often as the busyness runs amuck, I am thankful for
how CC has given me a plan and resources to implement something that really
does add richness and enjoyment to our homeschool: I do almost all of these
during the 24 weeks and the kids love it and we are the better for it.
