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Classical Conversations Review: 1st Quarter, Cycle 3

By the grace of God, we have managed to successfully complete seven full weeks of Classical Conversations (CC) already! Time is moving at an unusually expeditious pace, of which I should be accustomed but am not. If you’ve wondered what a Classical Conversations education looks like practically, from someone who’s brand new, this Classical Conversations review should be enlightening!

Choosing To Homeschool With Classical Conversations

I chose Classical Conversations as the base for our homeschool curriculum for a myriad of reasons. The intricacies behind that decision are detailed in this blog post but predominantly I hope my children will fall in love with learning as they are learning, something that our modern educational system is not modeled for.

I have four children, three of which are school aged. My oldest is 12, a seventh grader, and participating in Challenge A. My middle two children are 7 and 5, elementary aged, and are participating in Foundations. My youngest observes and sings along (an entire blog post could be dedicated to that alone!).

Having never witnessed a CC education up close and personal, my vision for our first homeschool year was foggy. Ideas swirled about my brain but without form and clarity. Now that we have completed the first quarter of the curriculum, my vision is clear.

In this blog post, I will give a first quarter Classical Conversations review as well as detail our typical homeschool week and day. 

How To Homeschool Multiple Ages In Classical Conversations

To put it plainly, Classical Conversations is like a modern day one room schoolhouse. Teaching multiple ages at once is exactly what the program was designed to do. Every strand (i.e. subject) within CC points back to God’s Word and His world. 

As I’ve mentioned before, Classical Conversations has three programs within it’s umbrella. Foundations, Essentials, and Challenge. Within Challenge, there are six levels. Think of it as middle and high school grades 7-12.

Foundations and Essentials is for elementary aged kids kindergarten through sixth grade.

Foundations is the longest program, beginning at age four/five (kindergarten) and running through aged 11 (sixth grade).

As it’s name suggests, Foundations aims to lay the foundation for the Essentials and Challenge programs. Children utilize their spongey brains to memorize material so that when they reach the older grades, they can dip into their memory bank and be able to master their subjects. 

For example, my five year old has no idea how to compute 8×13 but she can give you the multiplication fact 104 because she’s memorized her multiplication tables song(s).

Essentials begins once a student reaches 8 years of age, the equivalent of third grade, and is taught in tandem with Foundations. At this level, students learn the art of grammar to prepare them for high school. None of my children have gone through Essentials yet.

Challenge levels (A, B, I, II, III, IV) focus on the classical trivium which are rhetoric, dialectic, and grammar. The students implement all of the memory work they learned in Foundations.

Had my Challenge A student begun in Foundations like her siblings, she would have been better equipped for her program. With that said, she is being appropriately challenged (pun intended) in a way her previous educational experiences could not. Despite her not having the Foundations groundwork, she is doing quite well in Challenge A.

Because Challenge students are encouraged to be lead learners, practically speaking, I don’t have to sit with her the entire time she does her work and teach her like I do my younger kids. This actually takes quite a bit of mental load off of me!

A Typical Homeschool Schedule with Classical Conversations (Review)

Classical Conversations is centered around community. Community groups meet once a week. Our Classical Conversations community day is on Tuesday.

Community Day is the time for children to learn their new memory work, practice public speaking, and review memory work from prior weeks with their peers. 

That leaves Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for us to learn at home. We’ve found a rhythm that works for our family so we may meet our goals and have time for fun and rest. 

We do school work (i.e. book work) on Monday and Wednesdays. 

Thursdays is typically our “off day” where we will go do something with friends, visit the library, etc. 

Fridays we use to finish up whatever we couldn’t complete during the week or do something fun related to our lessons. 

A typical homeschool day for us looks like:

  • 7-8:30 am breakfast, get dressed, drop youngest brother off at nursery school for a few hours
  • 8:30-9 am get everything out and ready for class to begin 

(*we don’t use a homeschool room)

  • 9-11:30 learning time

This is where we complete all of our Foundations memory work, book work, read aloud, etc.

My Challenge A student does her work independently. If she has questions, she’s welcome to come ask. Sometimes she pops in for memory work too because it’s fun!

  • 11:30-1pm pick up little brother, lunch, and break time
  • 1-2pm is when we will do either our nature study or weekly craft/activity. Little brother likes to do these with us so we save it for after lunch since they are light and fun.

By two in the afternoon, we’re done for the day. The kids will play usually or sometimes we go to the library. One afternoon a week we go to art lessons in town. (Reminder, we live in the country and limit activities.)

My Challenge A kid and I try to meet once or twice thorough the week to go over what she completed. Honestly, we don’t always do this but I’ll get to that more below.

This schedule sounds rigorous, even as I type it, but truly it is incredibly relaxed. If we can’t get to everything in a day, or if a kid is having a hard time focusing, I don’t force it. We table whatever we’re doing for another time. 

This is one of the absolute best aspects of homeschooling- meeting your kids where they’re at. The beauty of homeschooling is that you can adjust what you do, when you do it, and how you do it as often as you need! 

Classical Conversations Review Pros and Cons

The perfect homeschool curriculum doesn’t exist much like the perfect spouse or the perfect church. 

Though I’m still a novice in the realm of homeschool and Classical Conversations, my observant character lends me to maintaining a constant pros and cons list in my head. I’ll share my thoughts after our first quarter.

Let’s start with the pros:

  • Classical Conversations is immensely rich and thorough in their content. The layout of the cycles (this year is cycle 3) provides ample opportunity to connect history, science, and other subjects to the CC memory work. This is something I was worried about since CC is not a comprehensive program.
  • The one room school house aspect is wonderful for our family. Having 3 of my 4 kids learning the same material fosters a connection that we haven’t previously experienced. 
  • The actual CC curriculum, not just the concept, is excellent. There are so many resources available through CC Connected to help you dive deeper into each week’s memory work. They do a great job of supporting the parents this way.
  • Community day, while long, is really fun for the kids and gives them the social aspect that they crave.
  • The apps, music, and videos are incredible and catchy! It helps memory work be easier to retain for my old brain!
  • There are quite a bit of people on Youtube who put out free Classical Conversations videos. We love the Homeschool Helper!

Now for the cons:

  1. It’s not cheap, especially if you have multiple kids. Of course, nothing in homeschool is really free, but Classical Conversations does come with a price tag. 
  2. Classical Conversations can be very confusing for someone who isn’t familiar with it already. While it’s robust in content, it’s also very different from a typical educational model and I think CC could do a better job of conveying how CC works, practically speaking.

Summary Of Our First CC Quarter

Overall, our first quarter has gone better than I anticipated. My kids are all enjoying the curriculum and community and have quit talking about going back to their old school. In fact, lately they’ve been expressing how much they like being homeschooled.

So far this quarter, we have dissected owl pellets, made an edible skin model, learned about the history of Yankee Doodle Dandy, and made a movie about Christopher Columbus!

We take weekly trips to the library for books that coordinate with our memory work. Most of our reading is American history focused since that is what Cycle 3 focuses on. 

All of our car rides now include CC memory work songs played on repeat. We even find ourselves humming them through the day!

Our supplemental English and math work is still The Good and The Beautiful but I have added Explode the Code for my kindergartener. 

Second Quarter Goals 

There are some things I’d like to do better the second half of this semester, such as, using the five core habits (naming, attending, memorizing, expressing, and storytelling) more consistently. 

I mentioned above that meeting with my Challenge A daughter consistently, and not just when she has a question is something I want to do every week. It’s easy when they are more independent to assume they have it all done and together. 

All in all, I am still very pleased with Classical Conversations as our homeschool curriculum and look forward to the upcoming weeks. It’s funny how that works out when you let God lead you! 😉 You can read this post to learn more about our journey into the world of Classical Conversations.

If you have any questions about this Classical Conversations review, experiences, or comments, leave them below or email me at anna@thefruitfulhomemaker.com

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