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Curriculum review please!
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I have decided to join Classical Conversations this year simply for the fact that my son needs social interaction since he is the only little in the house. I am not a die-hard CM or classical parent. I camp in the middle, especially because in my state (Oregon) we have to test with the ESD and if I stick with CM he is recorded as falling behind. I decided to join CC to also help me with memory work and to be part of a co-op setting that would be a bit more academic. I plan on doing my own thing at home with the exception of reviewing the facts for a few minutes daily. I want a mix between reading and memorizing. With that said, I’d love some feedback on what I’m planning to do at home.
Bible: (still deciding and open to suggestions).
LA: Pathway Readers (2nd grade), Spelling You See (C), A Reason for Handwriting T, Queen’s Language Lessons for the Very Young.
Math: Rightstart level B History: Story of the World w/Activity Guide.
Science: Apologia’s Young Explorer Series – Flying Creatures.
Please tell me what you think. My son is 8 years old and going in to 2nd grade. I am looking for simple however I also need to challenge him.
I haven’t done Classical conversations, but have friends who have. my understanding is you continue the lessons you do at the Co-op at home. It doesn’t seem like you can “do your own thing” at home and participate well, but again, I haven’t done it. My friends have liked it if they were really into classical education, my friends who weren’t that into it, didn’t like it as much. They said it was more involved than they thought it would be. But it also seems to depend on the teacher and leaders.
For Bible, I do the scripture memory system that SCM recommends and we are just reading through the NT aloud and narrating. We do SCM for history and are doing Gen-Duet. So we are also studying the OT at the same time.
Grace
I’ve done CC and was a tutor….you can totally do your own thing at home with the younger ones.
You can pick a history course that goes along with the time in history CC is studying, you can just do CC history, you can just do CC history at CC and forget it the rest of the week while doing your own thing….you can do it however you want.
For that age, CC would say that you just do CC for most things, but add your own language arts and math.
From your list, it looks like you have have handwriting twice with Spelling U See (it includes copywork) and A Reason for Handwriting.
CC will be doing some ancient history this year. Story of the World, volume 1 would go along with that. I wouldn’t add the activity guide; I would just have narration with it to keep it simple. I love simple! 🙂
For me, the amount of memory work in CC was too much and some of the stuff was just way over the heads of my little ones. I focused on just a few things to have them memorize. Like, you’ll start with skip counting (which I think is great) in math…but end up doing upper math formulas that most lower grammar kids have no foundation for. I didn’t worry about having them memorize that at home.
I didn’t add formal science at home. I think that what they get at CC is plenty for the lower grades.
For Bible: have you seen Grapevine Studies? Super fun!!! You stick figure through the Bible. It’s a great way of having fun with drawing, learning Scripture and narrating with stick figuring. For my son, it really stuck and he loved it!
Hope that helps! We really enjoyed CC while we did it….but we didn’t do it by the book and made it our own at home.
Thank you for your replies. Since June, I have attended the CC Parent Practicum and now have decided that I need to simplify (which is what I’m hearing from MissusLeata?) I have decided to change what I had planned for curriculum. I looked through Language Lessons for the very young and it’s going to be way too easy so I sent it back. I’m not really going to be in the typical CM camp at this point but we’ll see. CM was a classical educator so some of it will follow. I have decided to go with:
First Language Lessons, ‘The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading’, Story of the World Vol.1, CC Prescripts for beginning cursive, R&S Spelling by Sound and Structure, then beginning readers for reading practice. WWE will be used to direct writing instruction but not the workbooks.
My Ds is having difficulty moving forward in his reading so I am opting for an inexpensive phonics book (OPGTR) that I can use as a reference book for helping me teach him reading and I dont want to fork out the money for All About Reading/spelling. I returned the Pathway Readers because I am trying to get Ds more interested in regular books and I dont have time to do both. I also returned Spelling You See because I need a program that actually teaches spelling rules and SYS does not. I have decided to use the CC Acts & Facts cards so I can take the sentences off the back for copywork and particularly for science, I have purchased some notebook journals for him to draw in the space above his copywork. CC has Bible memory work that is free and so I think I’m going to simply read the Bible stories that go along and work with my SCM memory box as I love how effective it is 🙂 Handwriting will be simply because the Prescripts is only teaching cursive letter formation and nothing else, so I can continue with copywork and it wont be overwhelming to him. Overall, I have simplified so that CC doesn’t overwhelm me. I’m very excited because we dont have much in co-ops in my area and CC will help me with accountability academically. I already love the families. We seem to really fit in with this group, more so than the other co-op we were involved in last year.
We really enjoyed CC and would be doing it this year, but our group decided to change up. The CC campus disbanded and we are doing something different as a group this year.
If you use CC connected, you can get lots of copy work off of there and coloring pages with copy work to go with history sentences. You could pretty much just use the Acts and Facts and Timeline cards for your science and history, along with the science experiments at CC.
I don’t know how your son is reading, but I have an 8 year old starting 3rd grade and the Pathway Readers are what is getting him interested in reading. He just loves the stories!
I’m of the opinion that you can totally make CC a CM education just as easily as you can go Classical with it. We really enjoyed it and I hope you do, too. It’s something I recommend to my friends.
Okay, so I took this weekend to get organized and re-evaluate what I have planned for curriculum. Since I am doing CC and they are going to cover parts of speech, timelines, science, etc. I probably should change what I have planned. I looked through the SCM website and it really helped me (of course!) put things together. Here’s what I came up with:
Language Arts- Busy Times/More Busy Times, A Child’s Copybook Reader 1-3 (I like how it can go along with what we are doing in science), Explode the Code Online (phonics), R&S Spelling.
Literature- SCM read-aloud list, “I can read” books for free reading.
Math- Rightstart level B
Science- Pond & Stream w/companion books, The Usborne Book of Knowledge
History- Read-alouds such as Our Little Athenian/Spartan Cousin of Long Ago, Detective in Togas, Mystery of the Roman Ransom, Usborne Time Traveler, SOW AG 1. (I already own all these).
These selections seem to me that they would be more interesting than what I had planned originally and may be easier to implement. I dont want to allow CC to overtake my homeschool because if I do and I decide that I dont want to do it next year, then I have to restructure everything. I do own the Acts & Facts cards but I just want to use them for review during the week. I’m not impressed with CC Connected. I can’t believe that they charge a monthly fee for that at least for the forum part. I will however go along with the CC geography. I see no problem with that.
As I was looking more into First Language Lessons, I am confused as to why I would need to add in Writing with Ease. There is already so much copywork and narration already in FLL. Also, some of the copywork in FLL lost me because it was not impressive at all. I had decided to use OPGTR for phonics but I thought about how things went this last year and I realized that my son really did enjoy the Pathway Readers and really did well with ETC online. Maybe I’ll just hold on to the book for reference in case I need to look up a phonics rule. As for FLL, I am going to return it. I keep WWE as a reference as well.
A friend of mine is selling me Primary Language Lessons and Intermediate Language Lessons by Emma Serl together for $5 total. I can’t pass that up so I will hold on to those until maybe the middle of the school year. Ds is in 2nd and the books are meant for 2/3rd grade.
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