Students up through age 8 do Foundations only.ĬC Foundations + a language arts program of your choice ( here’s ours) + a math program of your choice ( here’s ours) is a full homeschool curriculum for this age.įoundations meets for 24 weeks per school year – 12 weeks in the fall, 12 weeks in the spring. This is where they will learn all sorts of facts relating to math, science, Latin, English, history, and geography. Foundationsįoundations is also called the grammar stage (that was confusing to me at first – in my mind “grammar” means parts of speech, diagramming sentences, that sort of thing, but grammar in this aspect means laying a foundation). So now that you understand the classical education model let’s talk a little more about how Classical Conversations specifically worksĬC has three main “levels” – Foundations, Essentials, and Challenge. This book is a good resource if you’d like to learn more about classical education How does Classical Conversations work? Instead of Bible facts though, it’s sentences about history, math equations, Latin conjugations, science facts, etc. Your Sunday School class probably classically educated you and you had no idea that’s what it was called!Ĭlassical Conversations is very similar. And as they get older they’ll draw on those facts they memorized as a young child, expand on them, revisit stories they learned in their preschool class and learn them deeper. They aren’t ready yet to understand the the larger, more abstract Bible topics so we fill their brains with things they can learn – Bible facts – and then as they get older they dive in deeper. I did that growing up and have done the same with my kids. And you likely learned a lot of those things via song. If you’re like me, you grew up learning lots of Bible facts – the books of the Bible, names of the apostles, names of the judges, the days of creation, etc. The analogy I like to use to explain an classical education is one that will make sense to those who grew up in the church. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves.” (read her article here for a more in depth explanation) In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. Susan Wise Baur explains a classical education: “ The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. I’ve had to do some studying up on the subject! I still didn’t fully understand the program and how it worked but I was excited to dive in! What is Classical Conversations?Ĭlassical Conversations is a Christian-based, classical education program.Įven though I was an educator myself I had no idea what a “classical education” meant so when people used that term to describe CC it didn’t mean much to me. So a couple of years later when we were ready to start Hudson in kindergarten we decided to go with Classical Conversations and join our local community. I also loved that the students did presentations – teaching them public speaking from such a young age is so smart! In addition to that we already knew several of the families in the community from a previous playdate group we’d had when the kids were little so that was a plus too. We love to sing so that felt like a good fit for us. One part that really stood out to me was how much singing there was! A lot of the memory work they were doing was to song. It certainly didn’t fit my idea of what topics would be taught in a kindergarten-ish classroom but at the same time I thought it was very intriguing. I had ZERO knowledge of CC going in to that open house and I was excited to check it out!Īt that open house I was both impressed and confused! Here were these 4 and 5 year olds singing a long song about events in history, reciting math equations that aren’t usually introduced until middle school, quoting Latin, standing up in front of their class to give presentations, and tracing maps of countries around the world. My neighbor knew I was planning on homeschooling so she invited me to a local Classical Conversations open house. When I began considering homeschooling as the educational path for our family I knew I really wanted to be a part of some sort of in person homeschooling group so that I wouldn’t be floating out in homeschool land all by my lonesome and so that we would be able to spend time with other homeschool families. (scroll to the bottom for a video version of this post) How did I pick Classical Conversations?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |