CC

Our very favorite thing about school this year is being part of a Classical Conversations campus.  (Click on the words to link over to their site for more info.) 

Classical Conversations is...

a MISSION to know God and make Him known.

a MODEL to combine Biblical worldview and classical tools.

a METHOD to equip parents and encourage students.

I am sure I will fail to do it justice in my explanation, but the jist of it is: 

• Each week we're covering History, Geography, Latin, English, Bible, Math, Science, Art or Music and public speaking.  
• Best of all, it is a community of like-minded families coming together to a campus once a week, kinda like a co-op.
• We pay tuition and the kids are drilled the week's memory work by their tutors. (Each of the tutors is one of the CC moms.) 
• We parents (who are not tutors) are still our kids' teachers, though, so we sit in class with them and we drill and further expand upon the info at home. 
• Classes are broken up by age groups, so that each class can be with peers and learn the info in ways that are age-appropriate.
• We're learning tons and making great friends!

Here's our first week's memory work all laid out on our white board:

(Yes, I spelled Phylum wrong.  Mommy is learning, too!)

We've been in CC for 7 weeks now and the boys can show you on a map the parts of the fertile crescent, the roman empire, the hittite empire, etc. They can skip count all the way thru the thirteens, building an amazing base for multiplication and future math skills. They can name half the prepositions in the English language, etc, etc, etc...It's phenomenal!

In addition to the giving a weekly presentation (learning public speaking skills) and drilling the History Timeline, History Sentences, Geography, Latin, Math, English and Bible memory work, they are doing a science project each week and also doing art or music.

 Doing Art:

 Doing science experiments:

 Crayfish examination/dissection:

 Lunch time: 

Thursdays have definitely become our favorite day of the week! It has been delightful to get out of our house and do the "S" word which we homeschoolers are often accused of failing to do.  Socializing is just the tip of the iceberg, though.  CC's material just rocks!  

I am growing in appreciation of the classical method, as I am seeing my kids' academic foundations being laid firm.  No, my littles do not understand in depth what all the parts of animal or plant cells do, but they are memorizing them and gaining a vocabulary that will make expanding on these subjects 100x easier in future years.  I am learning TONS myself.  I am learning Latin, for crying out loud!

Even Zoë Kate is picking up on the material and can rattle off the history timeline from Creation through 1 AD, which is as far as we've gone.  She also roams the house saying, "Golgi Bodies." She has no idea what golgi bodies do in plant and animal cells, but she knows they're a part of them.  Did you?