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Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Week 2
A little background: This is our family’s fourth year to participate in a Classical Conversations (CC) community. We participate in the Foundations portion of the program, which is designed for children ages 4 to about 11. The Foundations program lasts for 24 weeks each year. Each week the children cover 7 different grammar subjects (Timeline, History, Math, Science, English, Latin, and Geography), do a short (2-3 minutes) presentation, participate in one or more Science experiments and cover some area of Fine Arts. It’s a VERY busy morning! This will be a really quick post about just a couple of things that I found to help with review for this week’s grammar. Geography Someone in…
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Lesson Planning Software
This is officially our fourth year of home schooling, and I have tried a little bit of everything when it comes to planning our lessons. When we first started, I purchased a boxed set of curriculum and tried to use the lesson plans that accompanied it. I soon discovered, that while the curriculum was good and the lesson plans might have been good ones, too, they just weren’t good for us. I spent hours that year creating new and complicated lesson plans in Excel, since it’s a program that I’m familiar with, and then discovered something that I probably should have realized: Life rarely goes according to plan. Kids get…
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Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Week 1 Update
A little background: This is our family’s fourth year to participate in a Classical Conversations (CC) community. We participate in the Foundations portion of the program, which is designed for children ages 4 to about 11. The Foundations program lasts for 24 weeks each year. Each week the children cover 7 different grammar subjects (Timeline, History, Math, Science, English, Latin, and Geography), do a short (2-3 minutes) presentation, participate in one or more Science experiments and cover some area of Fine Arts. It’s a VERY busy morning! This past week was our first week. Here are a few things from this week that might be helpful to others of you with…
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Kid-Friendly Family Games
Back in March, we traveled (by Megabus . . . but THAT adventure we can discuss on another post) to Washington DC with both kids and luggage full of winter clothing. Quick Travel Tip: it is COLD in DC in March. On the upside, it is not crowded, and if you’re up for it, there is ice skating on the National Mall. Very Cool. Literally and figuratively. But, I digress. So, we spent a full week eating every meal in a restaurant of some shape form or fashion. Our children are generally well-behaved and pretty good company, but let’s get real . . . they aren’t perfect. And, after getting…
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I’m a total loser
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It’s not you (or them). It’s me.
Timing is everything. I had this post written a few days ago and was really just mulling over whether it was done. Tonight, a friend and I had a conversation that touched on so many of these things. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who doesn’t have it all figured out. Here’s a principal I’ve always pretty carefully observed when it comes to my marriage: don’t complain about your spouse to others. There are no “take-backs” after you’ve told someone else that your spouse has wronged you in some way, whether it’s minor or not. Those of us with marriages that are still kicking after a period…
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I’m a total loser
Some of my favorite memories of my childhood involve being a loser. My dad was absolutely fantastic about playing checkers with me, starting sometime around when I was 8. After we’d gotten pretty good at playing a basic game of checkers, he had a desire to learn how to play chess, so we basically learned together. And, here’s the important part – he never, ever LET me win. In fact, on the VERY rare occasions when I did, in fact, beat him, he would grin and look at me and say, “You gotta let the little kids win sometimes.” And I would grin and laugh with him, because we both…
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Kid-Friendly Family Games
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First Day
So, we started our homeschool year today. Was it perfect and smooth? Why, no, it was not. My Kindergartener, who has anxiously been awaiting this day (mostly in anticipation of our traditional ice cream smorgasbord for lunch) and who was absolutely giddy while doing his back-to-school supply shopping the evening before, deflated and lost his enthusiasm shortly after realizing that we were going to be doing a little (and really, just a little) actual school work before we switched to the “celebration” portion of the day. Trying to get him to complete anything was, to say the least, a challenge. His sister, a Second Grader, declared for the first time…
