Our First Year in Classical Conversations: How it Went and My Thoughts

I guess I'm what you call a "sometimes" blogger!  I really love keeping this record for our family, I love to see how far everyone comes each year, how much they grow, and the fun things that we do.  Unfortunately I just never seem to have the time to sit down and write a blog post!  I have contemplated doing a You Tube channel, but lets be real, I hate to be on camera!

So here I am as we are coming to the end of our school year, and I really do want to do a recap of how things went this year.  This was our first year with Classical Conversations and it was amazing!  We all learned so much, made great friends and look forward to doing it again next year!  If you would like to see what curriculum we used this year you can check that out here.  

I would first like to go over how our year in Classical Conversations went for each of us.  For our youngest, Zach, who had just turned 5 at the beginning of the year, it was a challenge.  He enjoyed going every week, but really wanted me to be with him all day.  He was the youngest in his class, and so that was also a bit of a challenge, although you couldn't really tell he was the youngest by the way he interacted with the other kids.  One aspect of CC that I really love is the public speaking part, each week the kids give a presentation (at Zach's age its mostly just a glorified show and tell), I was truly wondering how he would handle that.  He did awesome!  The kid has no fear of talking to anyone and had a great time sharing what he brought with his friends.

Noah, had quite a different experience.  At the end of last year we found out that he is dyslexic and had heard that Classical Conversations is a great fit for kids who are dyslexic because it's all memorizing and verbal.  He made some really good friends but about half way through the year his tutor (that is what they call the "teacher") moved out of state, so he had to say good-bye to her.  That is very hard for our little soft hearted guy.  He was so upset and didn't want to go back.   He got a new tutor, who was great, but she did things a little bit differently. He struggles with change and if things are too hard he tends to shut down.   All in all I think he had an amazing year and learned so many things!

Elijah, who is 12, did the Foundations program, but also the Essentials program.  In the morning he was doing the same memory work that his little brothers were doing and then in the afternoon we focused on writing, grammar work, and math facts.  I am so amazed at how well he did this year, he comprehended things so well and came so far in his writing.  At the beginning of the year he struggled to write a single sentence and at the end of the year he turned in a five paragraph paper!  It is on to their Jr. High program next year for him, Challenge A, and I know that it is going to be a very challenging program for him and he will have a lot of growth.

For me, this is exactly what our family needed this year!  Classical Conversations is a great community of like minded parents who are striving to teach their children classically at home.  In our local community I found friends, support, and a great group for my kids to grow with and feel accepted.  At the beginning of the year I was determined to just sit back and take it all in.  Well when Noah's tutor left and they were looking for a new one, I was considering it.  Someone else stepped up and I really felt relieved because I didn't think I could do it.  A few weeks later, over our Christmas break, they were once again seeking out a new tutor because our community was growing.  So with a lot of prayer, I offered to do it.  I am so glad that I did!  It was a great experience and I loved it so much that I am going to be doing it again next year!

Here is my overall review of the Classical Conversations program:

Pros:  

• Community-having people to support me on the days when I want to quit
• Consistency- meeting weekly for 24 weeks with the same families
• Classical

Cons:

• Price- it is quite expensive

Honestly as far as the cons that is the only one I can think of for our family. Thankfully I am able to tutor and that covers most of our tuition, which is a great blessing!

This is getting kinda of long so I will stop for now, and continue our year in review in another post.  If you have any questions about how Classical Conversations works you can check out their website and get in contact with a local director!

Our Learning Spaces

It's School Room week at the iHomeschool Network Blog Hop!  So if you have come from there, thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope you enjoy taking a peak at where we do school in our home.

In years past we have kept most of our learning in just one room.  We live in a split level home that has a great space in the basement area for a school room.  Before we moved into this house 2 years ago we schooled in one of our three bedrooms turned into a school room.

This year I decided that I wanted a space where we could all sit and do our memory work, morning time and art projects together.  We had been given this old table from my husbands grandma when she passed away. Yes the chairs don't match, but the chairs that came with the table were not that great.  I had a friend that graciously gave me three of those chairs and the other one we already had.   So that is what we are now using as our together work space.  It is working wonderfully!!

Here is our table that we use, on the table I have a supply carousal which holds pencils, markers, and colored pencils.  On the floor on the left is my morning basket.

 

We will be using the whiteboard for our Classical Converstions memory work.  I have each subject label taped onto the board.  Hanging above the whiteboard is our timeline cards, I found those boards with clips in the Target dollar spot.  Something new that we will be doing this year is saying our pledges.  I found that poster from CBD and it has the American flag, the Bible and the Christian flag pledges on it.      

                        

On this bookcase are all the materials that my kids will use for morning time.  On the top shelf is our CD player, a basket with CD's and our Mystery of History memory card box.  The second shelf has a basket with dry erase markers (white), our CC memory cards (mint green), a box of crayons, and in the red basket are our map Trivium Tables, under the baskets are their map placemats.  On the third shelf is a box of play dough, and Elijah's morning basket.  On the bottom shelf is Zach's and Noah's morning baskets.  Each child has their own basket that holds their morning time binders, science binders and a small whiteboard.  In the green basket on the bottom are Elijah's books that he will be reading independently this year, he decided that that was a good place to put it.


We also still use our school room to do independent work.

This is Elijah's desk, in a little room off our our school room.

This is Noah's desk in the same room as Elijah's.

This is Zach's school area.  He has this little table, and the workboxes
behind it. 

A look at the big picture from the hallway.  

The room that Elijah and Noah work in is off to the left when you walk into our school room.  This room is quite spacious, and could hold everyones desks but I find that the older two get distracted when I am teaching Zach and they need a little bit of separation.

Here is where I keep all of our art supplies and curriculum that we aren't using
at the moment.  It is also a catch all sometimes!  This is the room that Elijah
and Noah's desks are in.

In our school room I have an Ikea Expedit shelving unit.  I love it!!  On that bookshelf I keep a lot of my current teachers manuals, early readers, and our read alouds that we will be using for the year.

We also have a bunch of manipulatives that we keep in the blue bins at the bottom.  We keep our dictionaries, encyclopedias, and atlases here as well.

On the other side of the Ikea Expedit is a space for our awesome beanbag chair and our whiteboard that we use for All About Reading and All About Spelling.

It is certainly not the most organized of spaces but it seems to be functioning well for us at the moment.  If you are interested in seeing other school room spaces then you should hop on over to the iHomeschool Networks Blog Hop, there are lots of different ideas just floating around there!

Daily Schedule 2016-17

I love schedules!  If you have read my blog ever you already know that.  So this year our schedule is a bit tricky.  Since we will be starting Classical Conversations for the first time, I am not too sure what our final schedule will look like, but here is what we are working with right now.

Time	Mom	Zach	Noah	Elijah
7:00	Wake up, prepare for the day	Sleep	Sleep	Sleep
7:30	Wake up, prepare for the day	Wake Up, morning check list	Wake Up, morning check list	Wake Up, morning check list
8:00- 9:00	Breakfast/chores	Breakfast/chores	Breakfast/chores	Breakfast/chores
9:00- 11:30 Morning Time/ Memory Work	Bible Memory Work: Vocabulary Latin Science History  Read Aloud Music/Art	Bible Memory Work: Vocabulary Latin Science History  Read Aloud Music/Art	Bible Memory Work: Vocabulary Latin Science History  Read Aloud Music/Art	Bible Memory Work: Vocabulary Latin Science History  Read Aloud Music/Art
11:30	Lunch/ afternoon chores	Lunch/ afternoon chores	Lunch/ afternoon chores	Lunch/ afternoon chores
12:15	Sustained Silent Reading	Sustained Silent Reading	Sustained Silent Reading	Sustained Silent Reading
12:30- 1:45	Kindergarten Reading Math  Handwriting	Kindergarten Reading Math  Handwriting	Math  handwriting Typing/Coding	Math IEW Writing Grammar Typing/ Coding
1:45	Reading Spelling	Free Play	Reading Spelling	math IEW Writing Grammar Typing/ Coding
2:15	Writing	Free Play	Writing	math IEW Writing Grammar Typing/ Coding
2:45	Reading to Noah	Free Play	Reading with Mom	math IEW Writing Grammar Typing/ Coding
3:00	Quiet Time	Free Play	Free Play	Free Play

Our morning time will cover a lot of ground for us this year.  We will be including all memory work, read alouds, history, and science.  So far that is working really well for us.  

After lunch we will dive into our independent subjects, this is totally new for us this year.  Typically we would do our independent things in the morning, and then do together subjects in the afternoon.  I always wanted to get math and reading out of the way while their brains were fresh, but I think this will work well doing it after lunch.  

As you can see Elijah has a big block of subjects and basically when he is done with those he is done with his school day.  While I am working with Zach, Noah will be doing what he can on his own.  Then once Zach is done I will move on to teaching Noah.  

Keep in mind that the times posted are just approximate, we don't stick too closely to those.  I really like to have an idea of when things should happen to keep me on track with our day.