Thoughts on Classical Conversations

All. the. singing.

I really had no idea how much singing you would do in Classical Conversations (CC).  Weekly history sentence, that’s a song.  Skip counting 1-15, the squares and cubes, there’s a song for that.  Latin noun singular, plural or verb present, imperfect and future tenses, there’s a song for that.  The best part, they get stuck in your head.  They make you think, you want to know more.  After singing over and over and over, “In 1054 the church split into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox.  William the Conqueror defeated King Harold of England in 1066 and started feudalism in England,” to a catchy tune for a week, you’re going to have questions, you might even want to read more about it! I cannot even read that history memory sentence without saying it to the tune of the song.  While listening to a different history sentence about Richard the lionhearted, G turns and asks, “Mama why is he called the lionhearted.”  Just this week while practicing our 3s skip counting song E says, “I got it” to herself as she accurately sang the song through completion.

Classical Conversations is based off the classical model of education, grammar stage, logic stage and rhetoric stage.  Although, perhaps more accurately labeled neo-classical.  They emphasize rote memorization in the Foundations (grammar) years in order to fully participate in the conversations of the Challenge (rhetoric) years.  No quarter-fact-jacks here.  The emphasis is to memorize the vocabulary of the subject creating memory pegs to recall information.  Community day is once a week for 24 weeks 4 hours long for Foundations students (K-3rd grade).  Essentials students (starting in 4th grade) have a 6 hour day.  Challenge students (starting in 7th grade) have a longer school year by 6 weeks, as well.  This is not a drop-off program, the parents stay and participate the entire time.

No, one, CC Community is a like, I only have my experience to elaborate on.  Our group in town is phenomenal, they are absolutely a group of caring, hard working mama’s!  Our CC director is such a sweet lady.  She’s the type of lady that most people know in the homeschooling community because of her efforts around town, when or if her name is mentioned the first words anyone E.V.E.R has to say about her is, “Oh she is so sweet!.”  The kids are even sweeter, it is absolutely beautiful watching the oldest students looking out for the youngest students in and out of class time, whether that means walking around with a 2year old from another family, or helping them with their grammar work.

Our community day consisted of morning assembly, new grammar (memory work) information, fine arts/music, science, presentation, and review time.  All information is introduced in easy, fun ways at the Foundations level, some of the things we did in class consisted of the students shouting, quite or grumpy voices to repeat memory work, playing London Bridges as we skip counted math, using animal counters to locate geography locations, dancing to the timeline song, or the students listening attentively to the timeline song and raising their provided timeline card at the correct time in the song, running across the room individually as they repeated their memory work with the tutor.  Each child, also, had an opportunity for presentation (‘show and tell’ for this age group) where we went over basic public speaking etiquette, standing up tall, not talking during someone else’s speech, looking at the audience and presenting our given object loudly and clearly.  We ended the day with group picnic lunch and play time.  We had a great experience with the people in our CC community.  The last day of CC community I asked G what he thought about CC and he replied “It was hard but fun.”

Now with all that said, it probably sounds like I’m selling CC.  I can positively say all of that, and still tell you that for this upcoming year we will NOT be participating in our local CC community.  What a hard decision this has been, I have not written off rejoining CC at a later time and I know that if we decide to rejoin CC we will welcomed with loving arms.

The reason?  I am homeschooling with a million options on my hands.  That’s right, I never imagined that some of my hardest homeschooling decisions would be saying NO to things.  There is a tremendous amount of options available without driving too far everyday of the week, literally.  I am still deciding between activities to join for this upcoming year, from CC to other local co-ops, group music classes, art classes, robotics classes and debate classes, to field trip groups to book clubs, P.E. classes, STEM classes, online classes, a Homeschool Gathering group which is a drop off program for science related learning, and forest school, all created for homeschooling parents and students.  Not to mention, thanks to recent legislation the Tim Tebow bill, homeschoolers now have access to public school sports in their district, though, each district may have different eligibility requirements.  The list of options is long, and the curriculum choices are even longer.  Home education in the 21st century is much more than meets the eye.  I have to say ‘no’ to good things, and this upcoming year we have decided to say no to CC.  However, I’ve already purchased the next cycle memory work songs to use at home, leisurely, because I can’t say no to a catchy tune.

I’m not sure I could possibly list out all the Pros and Cons of CC.  I think for each family this is going to vary.  Where one family might place a strong emphasis another family may not.  A few things that come to mind.  Pros: Accountability.  Meeting other homeschooling families.  Friends.  Awesome songs and a solid geography curriculum.  Pulling together to teach curriculum.  History is taught chronologically.  Cons: Cost.  Classical Model, this is a pro/con, if you do not understand the Classical method of education you might be in for a shock (I was the first half of the year).  Only 1x a week and not a drop-off program, this is a pro/con, depending on what you are looking for.

With the ages of my children I felt we could use our time equally well in a different setting and still provide our children an awesome personalized education.  The cost of CC was another factor, we want to travel more to places around the U.S.A that correlate with our course of study.  I want to read, read and read some more, living-books, and while the library is great, I want to own a lot of these books for ease.  Traveling, CC, buying used books, curriculum costs, church events, homeschool activities and sports adds up in both time and money, we have to say ‘no’ to good things.

Up Next: Stay tuned for our course of study update to follow in the next few weeks, and our ultimate decision on activities to participate in!