Review: Classical Conversations

This year is our family's third year in a Classical Conversations Foundations community. We have truly loved our experience. Really, it can be as much or as little as you make of it. You can use it as the entire foundation for your homeschool and spend your whole week just reviewing & building upon what you did during your CC day, or you can just use it as a chance for your kids to interact with other kids their age. We fall somewhere in between. We don't spend a lot of time during the week on review, but sometimes the only science, art & music we do is at CC. Lunch & recess are my kids' favorite part of their CC day, and for that, it's worth going. I also value the time with and advice from other homeschooling moms.

There is a fee involved-- I believe I paid about $450 for each kid, but that almost all goes to their tutor and minimal art supplies, etc. So here's what a typical day is like:

Kids can start as young as age 4 and it goes up to 6th grade (there is also a Challenge program for 7th-12th grades but we don't interact much with them). Basically, we are a group of homeschooling families that meet at a church (although its not specifically a program just for Christian homeschoolers) once a week. The kids are split into classes based on their age, typically 6-8 kids per class with one tutor. There are 5 components of our day:

1. New Memory Work- This is the main component of the Classical method. Young children memorize a simple statement or list or definition from each subject. They may often not understand what it is they are memorizing and CC does not spend a lot of time actually teaching the meaning of what they are memorizing, but later when they approach that subject, they will be able to recall it, making it a lot easier. The subject areas are:
       History
       Latin
       Science
       English Grammar
       Geography
       Math (usually skip counting)
       Timeline (161 pivotal events from history-- they are all put into one long song the kids can
           usually sing easily after only a few months in the program!)

It seems like a lot, but it is such a short amount for each subject and usually it's put to music or taught in a fun way that the kids can easily remember. Throughout the week usually all we (my family) do is listen to a couple of the songs to review or go on the CC website, which has a tutorial that goes through the material (there is a $6/ month membership fee if you are part of a CC community).

2. Presentations- Basically like a show-and-tell, where the students get a chance to practice speaking about different topics in front of a group of people and develop public speaking techniques.

3. Science- We do experiments together so we don't have to do them at home. Some people use this as their only science-- perhaps adding in just a few books through the week. I usually do a little more, but it tends to build on what they are learning.

4. Fine Arts- This is split into 4 six-week sessions: drawing, artists (learn about an artist and then do a craft or painting in their style), tin whistle, and composers/ orchestra. This is the component I really take advantage of, because we don't really do any of this at home!

5. Review- covers the past 6 weeks of memory work.


All ages are working on the same material at the same time. (Clearly, the 4-year-olds aren't expected to remember as much as the 11-year-olds and the older kids may not do as many catchy songs or games, but its all the same!) There are 3 "cycles" of material, one year each. So, ideally, if your child starts when she is 5, she can go through all 3 cycles twice, building a great base for learning more about the material once they get to middle and high school.

I have heard from many moms who have older children that the materials they learned in Foundations have really helped them understand some of the harder concepts in the upper grades-- especially English grammar, Latin, and math (learning skip counting makes multiplication much easier!). And I love the Timeline because it triggers my memory for many historical events I don't even remember learning in school. I wish I had been taught classically the way that my children are now learning!

I highly recommend the program if you can afford it for your children. It has really given us the motivation to continue our classical studies and my kids have a lot of fun!




Find out more at classicalconversations.com.