Classical Conversations Review: Thoughts After Our First Year

We have officially finished our first year of Classical Conversations!  Unfortunately due to the coronavirus our year got cut short and our last 4 weeks had to be completed at home over Zoom.  But even with The ‘Rona screwing up our last few weeks we still had a great year!

As I just finished sharing reviews about the language arts and math curriculums we used this year I thought I’d go ahead and do a review/explanation/”what we did” post about Classical Conversations (aka CC).  So here’s my Classical Conversations Foundations review!

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(scroll to the bottom for a video version of this post)

How did I pick Classical Conversations?

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.

My neighbor knew I was planning on homeschooling so she invited me to a local Classical Conversations open house.  I had ZERO knowledge of CC going in to that open house and I was excited to check it out!

At 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.  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.

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.  We love to sing so that felt like a good fit for us.  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.

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 still didn’t fully understand the program and how it worked but I was excited to dive in!

What is Classical Conversations?

Classical Conversations is a Christian-based, classical education program.

Even 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.  I’ve had to do some studying up on the subject!

Susan Wise Baur explains a classical education: “The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves.” (read her article here for a more in depth explanation)

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.  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.  And you likely learned a lot of those things via song.  Yes?

I did that growing up and have done the same with my kids.

These kids are little.  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.  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.

Sound familiar?

Your Sunday School class probably classically educated you and you had no idea that’s what it was called!

Classical Conversations is very similar.  Instead of Bible facts though, it’s sentences about history, math equations, Latin conjugations, science facts, etc.

This book is a good resource if you’d like to learn more about classical education

How does Classical Conversations work?

So now that you understand the classical education model let’s talk a little more about how Classical Conversations specifically works

CC has three main “levels” – Foundations, Essentials, and Challenge.

Foundations

Foundations 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).  This is where they will learn all sorts of facts relating to math, science, Latin, English, history, and geography.  This is for students ages 4-12.  Students up through age 8 do Foundations only.

CC 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.

Foundations meets for 24 weeks per school year – 12 weeks in the fall, 12 weeks in the spring.

The Core is a book written by Leigh Bortens, the founder of Classical Conversations, and explains the theories behind the Foundations program more in depth.

Essentials

At age 9, students continue to do Foundations but also add on Essentials (if you’re part of a CC community they’ll typically do Foundations in the morning, break for lunch, and the Essentials in the afternoon).  In Essentials, students dive deeply into the English language – writing, diagramming sentences, etc.  It’s a full language arts program so outside of CC’s Foundations and Essentials you only need to have a separate math curriculum.

Like Foundations, Essentials is a 24 week long program per year.

Challenge

The final stage is Challenge.  This is what we’d typically think of as 7th-12th grade.  I don’t know tons about Challenge since my own children are so young, but this is where it all comes together.  All that fact memorization from the early years comes in to play here as the students and learn to research, debate, apply logic, and express themselves well.  They build on what’s learned in Foundations – for example in Foundations they learn geography and trace maps, in Challenge they learn to draw those maps from memory.

Challenge meets for 30 weeks a year.

Foundations Curriculum

Classical Conversations operates on a 3 year cycle so every three years it loops back around.  Each time your child goes through a cycle they learn it a little more deeply.  Depending on what age you start CC your child will likely go through the cycles 2-3 times.

And in case you were wondering, you can jump in at any cycle!  They don’t build on each other so you don’t have to start at Cycle 1.  The 2019-2020 school year was Cycle 2 so that’s where we started.

The yearly overview

Cycle 1 covers ancient history, related geography to the history sentences, classification of living things, parts of plants/flowers, rocks/mountains/volcanoes/oceans/weather, Latin noun endings, English prepositions and verbs

Cycle 2 covers medieval history through modern history, related geography to the history sentences, food chains, biomes, space, laws of motion and thermodynamics, light/heat/electricity, Latin verb endings, English pronouns and other parts of speech

Cycle 3 covers U.S. history, U.S. geography (states, capitals, mountains, lakes, etc.), anatomy, periodic table, theory of evolution, Latin parts of speech and John 1:1-7 learned in Latin and English, English verbs, clauses, and sentence structure

Math stays the same for each cycle and covers multiplication (skip counting), some measurements, equations for area, and some math laws (associative, commutative, etc.).  The timeline is learned/reviewed each cycle and so are the presidents.

the Cycle 2 year-at-a-glance so you can get an idea of what all is covered

The weekly overview

Everyone across the world who is participating in Classical Conversations will be doing the same thing each week.  Each week the Foundations curriculum covers:

• New Grammar: this is how they refer to learning the new sentences/phrases/equations/facts for history, geography, science, English, Latin, and math
• Timeline: over the course of the year the students learn a 13-minute long song that covers a timeline of world events from creation to current day; each week they learn 7 of the timeline events
• Fine arts: this changes every six weeks – the first six weeks they learn drawing, then tin whistle, then artists, and finally composers/orchestra
• Science experiment: in addition to learning a science fact, there is also a science experiment to do each week
• Presentation: the students do a presentation each week over a topic of their choice (think: show and tell)

an example of two weeks of memory work in the guide

What to expect on Community Day

I really encourage you to attend an open house with your local CC community so you can experience a community day in person but in case you can’t (like right now with everything shut down for the coronavirus) here’s an overview of what a community day looks like (at least, this is what it looks like at our campus, I assume others are similar)

Everyone (Foundations and Essentials only, Challenge has their own separate classes) meets together in a large group for Morning Meeting.  During this time learn the hand motions that go along with that week’s seven timeline items in the timeline song, have a short devotional and prayer, have announcements, say the pledge, and have a family presentation (each family takes a turn doing a presentation during the year over a topic of their choice).

After Morning Meeting the students break off and go to their classes.  These are divided by age and are small (6-8 students).

One parent, called the tutor, leads the class but other parents stay in there to help as well as learn the new grammar for the week.  Classical Conversations is not a drop-off co-op program.  It’s a community where all parents are expected to stay and help/learn.

The class structure will run in some combination of these things:

• New Grammar: learn the new memory work (Latin, English, science, history, math, and geography as well as going over the timeline events from the morning meeting again.).  These are often learned with songs and hand motions.
• Presentations: each child gets up in front of the class and does a short presentation.  At the very young age of the class we were in this year (4 and 5 year olds) it’s very casual – we just want them to get used to talking in front of people.  As they get older they’ll get more structured, use notes, etc.
• Fine Arts: Depending on which 6 weeks we’re in (see above) they may practice drawing, practice their tin whistle, paint, listen to pieces of music, learn about artists or composers, begin to learn to read music, etc.
• Science: Each week has at least one science experiment or activity.  Some of ours this year included building towers, making rockets, mapping out a scale model of the solar system, comparing how heat conducts through different materials, and lots more.
• Review: At the end of the class they’ll review the previous week’s memory work

That’ll last the full morning and at that point everyone breaks for lunch.  Those who are in Foundations only (like we were) are done for the day so we left after lunch.  Essentials and Challenge stay for their afternoon classes.

How to get started with Classical Conversations Foundations

While you can certainly do CC on your own at home, many people choose to be part of a community that meets in person.  I’m going off the assumption that you’re wanting to join a community so let’s start there.

First, find a Classical Conversations community near you (find one here) and get in touch with the director of that community.

You will have an application to fill out and tuition to pay (part of that goes to Classical Conversations to pay the directors and tutors and part of that is for your director to use to purchase all the science experiment supplies, art project supplies, etc.)

Then, whether or not you’re joining a community you’ll need to get your curriculum.  See below for that.

What supplies do you need for Foundations?

• Foundations Guide – The Foundations Guide contains the curriculum for all 3 cycles of Foundations so you only have to buy this once and it’ll be good for each year.
• Tin whistle – CC sells one or you can also find them on Amazon, I got this one

That’s all that you have to have in order to do Foundations.  Seriously!  That’s it!  There are other supplemental things you might want to add on, but they’re not requirements.  Here’s what I got for our first year in addition to the Foundations Guide:

• Timeline cards (1, 2, 3, 4) – We like hanging these up and looking at the pictures, sometimes I read the information off the back so we can learn a little more about a timeline event
• Geography placemats – Hudson really loved tracing the maps each week with dry erase markers so we enjoyed having these maps to practice that
• CC app – Classical Conversations has an app for each cycle.  I used this mostly for the history songs and Latin songs (the other subjects do not have official CC songs so I use ones found on YouTube to help us memorize those)
• Memory work on audio – You can purchase the memory work CDs or iTunes albums.  I mostly just wanted to have the full Timeline song so I bought the digital album that had that on it.  Many people like to buy the full set of cds or downloads so they can listen to them in the car but we kept it simple our first year and didn’t do that much.
• CC Connected subscription – CC Connected is a subscription service CC offers that has additional resources.  The one I use the most is a file sharing area where other CC parents share the worksheets and activities they create.

Here’s a video showing what all I got for our first year of Foundations

And here’s a video I made showing how I had everything set up and organized

What do you do outside of Community Day?

For our first year of Foundations we kept it very simple.  Hudson was only 5 when we started – he’ll visit all this stuff again when we hit this cycle again in 3 years, in my opinion there wasn’t a need to do a lot right now.  There are even some CC parents you’ll meet who don’t do anything at all outside of community day for their kids that are this young.

We do go over the memory work quickly every day, usually just one time per subject.  Sometimes if it was something he liked like history or geography we’d sing the song several times, but for the most part it was just a quick review of each memory item.

Our community did a map tracing challenge where they got rewards if they traced a certain number of maps.  Hudson really got excited about that so he traced a lot of maps.

I pretty much took his lead. The subjects he showed interest in, we dove into those a little more.  The subjects he didn’t seem to care about as much we worked a little on memorizing them but I didn’t push it.

And I should say…even with just going over each thing once a day (so really maybe 4ish times from one community day to the next) Hudson learned SO much!  I was amazed at what he retained!

A couple of other things I did:

I bought a bunch of Usborne books that align with Cycle 2 so we read out of those sometimes.  You can see that here:

I printed off some worksheets from CC Connected.  We did not do those during our usual school time but the boys would often work on them during their quiet time after lunch or when we were traveling in the car.

Occasionally we’d also watch some related Youtube videos and do some related activities.  There are some great CC parents out there who have compiled lists of videos and activities for each week.  Here are some of my favorites:

• Homeschooling Women of God (matched up activities and YouTube videos to go along with each week)
• To Sow a Seed (matched up activities and YouTube videos to go along with each week)
• Half-a-Hundred Acre Woods (tons and tons of CC resources)
• This Growing Home (science velcro activities)
• CC Happy Mom (the cutest geography songs!)

But for the most part we just kept it really, really simple!  Review the memory work plus occasional worksheets/videos/related books.  He’s in kindergarten and needs to spend more time playing than doing worksheets and watching videos.  And honestly I was pretty overwhelmed at first – being brand new to CC and to homeschooling was a lot.  Familiarizing myself with all of that took most of my brain space so I wasn’t really worried about coming up with elaborate related activities, finding books that aligned perfectly with the topics we were discussing, etc.  I mean, most of the time I couldn’t even tell you what we’d be learning about in upcoming weeks, I was just taking it a week at a time.

And you know what, that was perfect.  It was the perfect amount of learning.  Hudson picks up on the songs quickly and sings them often.  He has also made some amazing connections to things we’ve learned in CC when he hears them in other books, on videos, at church, etc.  We haven’t needed to do a ton of supplemental stuff for him to retain a ton of new knowledge.

Final thoughts

We LOVED it!  I am so, SO impressed with how much Hudson learned!  We loved our CC community and getting to know the other kids and families.  Hudson can’t wait for next year and Parker is super excited that he will be starting next year as well.

If you’re considering Classical Conversations I hope you’ll check it out and give it a try!

Video version:

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Other posts you might like:

• Logic of English Foundation A review
• RightStart Math Level A review
• Our full homeschool kindergarten curriculum line up
• What we used for our casual homeschool preschool
• 10 reasons why we decided to homeschool