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Classical Conversations Orchestra Cycle 3
I say this every year, but . . . . I really ENJOY the Orchestra 6-weeks of CC! If you need some ideas for things to do in class or to expand on things outside of class, I’ve got some suggestions! I’m always on the look out for new ideas myself, so please feel free to share yours in the comments below! Activities for Class If you’re a tutor out there who is stressing about this particular portion of the year, I’ll give you my layman’s two cents (and empathize with you . . . Tin Whistle is the hardest for me!): Don’t get bogged down in whether or not you love…
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Classical Conversations Statistics Labs from Cycle 3
We are entering Weeks 19-24 of Classical Conversations Cycle 3. This is the second time I’ve been through this cycle, and I have a better appreciation for the Statistics Labs. For the youngest, the abecedarians, this will probably be their first exposure to tally marks and making charts. I realized, having experienced with my own daughter, how much easier this made some of our math lessons a year after we were actually done with this cycle. Many of the concepts taught in these labs are challenging to our Foundations-age students (and their mothers!), but if we’ll slow down, try not to get intimidated, and take the time to try and understand…
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Honoring Martin Luther King Jr.
About two weeks ago, our family went to the local art museum. We were there primarily to see an exhibit of Norman Rockwell’s work, but also on display was an exhibit that highlighted art by some of our country’s African American artists. We wandered through this exhibit first, and as we went along, we came to this piece. Neither of my children (5 and 7) understood the piece at all. And so, I found myself in the middle of a museum trying to explain to my children how people can choose to judge each other entirely by the outside appearance rather than by looking at the heart. Truth be told,…
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Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Week 9
We got to go to our local children’s science center this week. To be honest, I wasn’t actually thinking in advance about how well their “Space” section fit in with what we were covering in CC, but it sure worked out perfectly! It was very cool to see the relative size of the planets on a larger scale and see lots of facts about them, the sun and the stars. It was just an excellent tie-in to the science grammar we’re covering in CC . . . reinforcing and adding to those memory pegs! Science Grammar Our cup overrunneth with ways to expand on this week’s Science Grammar! I’ll keep…
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Classical Conversations Cycle 2 . . . ummmmm, wait . . . FALL BREAK!
Tin Whistle While we’ve been on break this week, I did a little browsing around for new (and fun!) ways to teach and reinforce the music theory that we’re learning during the 6 weeks of Tin Whistle at CC. Our CC Community just started Tin Whistle this past week, so we have 5 more weeks to go. I’ll be honest, Tin Whistle is not my favorite part of CC. I actually don’t mind the music theory, although I would NEVER, seriously NEVER, call myself particularly proficient in this area. Really, what I am is a great APPRECIATOR of music. Pre-kids we had season tickets to the Symphony for a couple…
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Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Week 7
One more great week of CC in the books! English There are three very simple games on the following website for reviewing Possessive Adjectives – http://www.letshavefunwithenglish.com/games/possessive_adjectives/ This is a fun little picture book about pronouns. If you’ll go to the link at Amazon, you can flip through some sample pages of the book and see what it’s like. History FAIR WARNING! I haven’t actually read ANY of the following books. I have most of them on order, so I can come back and adequately review them, but right now, please consider this to be a very uneducated recommendation (there are reviews of them at Amazon, if you’d like to see those).…
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Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Week 6
Whew! We got to spend a really great weekend with my parents, visited a wonderful farm, and took a trip to a nearby aquarium in route home. We rushed back into town on Monday night and then spent quite a bit of time preparing my husband to teach three new (to him) online high school level classes on Tuesday, so this is the least attention that CC has gotten around here in a long time! This post might turn out to be short . . . hopefully it will be sweet, or at least slightly helpful. Math It’s around this time (skip counting 11’s-15’s, squares and cubes) in the math…
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Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Week 5
Are you familiar with the 10-24-7 rule? It isn’t exactly the method that we employ with Classical Conversations, but it’s similar. It basically says that to move something new from your short-term to your long-term memory you need to review the information 10 minutes after you’ve first learned it, then 24 hours later, and then 7 days later. If things were to go according to plan in a CC classroom, we’d introduce the new grammar information to the children earlier in class, then review it at the end of class (not exactly 10 minutes later, but within an hour or two). Then, outside of the classroom, the information is theoretically being…
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Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Week 4
English The Schoolhouse Rocks video about Pronouns (which we’ll continue to cover in grammar thru week 6) is very entertaining . . . and possibly educational. You can find it via a search of YouTube. Science Just to keep in simple, I made a little cycle hand out that can be used while we’re going over the cycles. If you’d like to use it, you may download it by clicking on the image below. The Magic Schoolbus Episode and Book “Wet All Over” covers the water cycle really well. Both the DVD and the book are available at Amazon, and the video is also available on you tube: There are…
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Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Week 3
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 week, we focused on reviewing geography. Here are some resources: If you have access to CC Connected, there’s nice little packet put together by another parent…
