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Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Week 12
Our Classical Conversations group took a field trip this week to the Dyer Observatory. If you live in or around Nashville, I would HIGHLY recommend it. It was an exceptionally good field trip and dovetailed BEAUTIFULLY with our recent CC Cycle 2 Science Grammar and Science Projects. The astronomer in charge re-visited the relative size of the planets and stars, took us on a planet walk to show us the relative position of the planets, educated us about the different planets as we walked, then did an activity to illustrate the phases of the moon and showed us the telescope they use at the observatory and how the roof moves…
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Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Week 11
We shot off rockets this week in our Classical Conversations group this week. It was GREAT fun, and the expressions on the kids’ faces were priceless, but I have no pictures. It’s really hard to tutor and take pictures at the same time, I’ve decided. And yesterday, I was too busy getting a second shower of the day from the water bottle rocket that prematurely went off right beside me, anyway. Sure, it was 30 degrees outside, but it was 100 degrees in my classroom, so really the kids did me a favor. And I think they thought that was as fun and funny as actually launching the rocket itself.…
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Classical Conversations Week 10
This week our “Science Project” was Facility Clean-up! I loved the opportunity to do a little something for our hosting church. They are wonderful and we SO appreciate their willingness to host our Classical Conversations (CC) group each week. Just to keep it real here, when I asked my son after the day was over what his favorite and least favorite parts of his CC day had been, “cleaning up his classroom” fell into the “least favorite” category. We need to do some work on the idea of serving others joyfully, obviously. All the children in my class were wonderfully helpful, though, and more than willing to pitch in and…
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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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Creating Classical Conversations Playlists in iTunes
As more and more of us switch to some sort of smart phone or tablet, there are more of us who would like to have our CC music on these gadgets. I’ve talked to several moms this year who would like some guidance on how to organize their CC music on iTunes, or who would like to create weekly playlists of the songs that apply to that week so they can concentrate their review. The following is how I keep my music organized. There may be better ways to do it, and I am ALWAYS open to suggestions. So, if you’ve got any thoughts or suggestions, please leave them in…
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Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Week 8
We’re back from our Fall Break and going strong. Or rather, we’re working our way up to “going strong.” It takes a week or so to get back in the swing of things. But the cycle of CC waits for no man, so we’d better get our act together. The break for the winter holidays will be quickly upon us. Math I created a little skip counting “booklet” that we used in class. You are welcome to download it by clicking on the image to the right. The idea is that the child works their way from the “1” block, which has the most information to the “7” block, which…
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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…
