Classical Conversations Cycle 3 Week 1

Here’s an overview of what we did at home for Classical Conversations Cycle 3 Week 1, Foundations and Essentials

(Note: some of these things link to documents on CC Connected.  If they do not open for you, make sure you have logged in to CCC first, then try my link again)

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FOUNDATIONS

The majority of these things I’ve shared about in my Cycle 3 prep video and blog post.  If you haven’t seen those yet, you might want to check them out because they go over these things in lots of detail.  This post is going to share how I put them into practice in our weekly/day to day homeschool.

Reviewing our memory work

We sing through/talk through our memory work once each day.

• History – The CC app (if you don’t have the app, it’s also here on CC Connected)
• Geography – CC Happy Mom’s song for weeks 1-3 (YouTube)
• Math – The CC app (if you don’t have the app it’s also here on CC Connected)
• Science – We didn’t have a song for this and each of my kids had different hand motions from their tutors so they each did the hand motions they learned while we said the 4 types of tissue
• English – We use this song on YouTube
• Latin – We use this song on YouTube
• Timeline – The timeline song on the itunes (also here on CC Connected)

Hands on with our memory work

I have several memory work hands on activities.  On the first day after community day we used them as we went over the memory work, then on the other days I keep them in a container and the kids took turns putting them in order/playing with them independently while I was working with one of the other kids on other lessons.

History – I cut out these history cards and put magnets on the back.  We scramble them up and they put them back in order on our magnetic board.  Even my 4 year old can do these because of the pictures on the cards.

Science – These velcro matching activities

Latin – Right now we are using the large set of the Latin matching activities – I put magnets on the back of them so they can match them up on the board.

Timeline – I gave them the timeline cards scrambled up and they put them back in order.

Geography – The kids trace their maps twice (the CC trivium table maps) with dry erase marker

Worksheets

My kids have a spiral notebook of CC worksheets.  They worked on these 50 states drawing/coloring pages and these memory work coloring pages (use code CHOCOLATE for 15% off the coloring pages).  My older two (ages 9 and 7) also used these presentation planning sheets to plan out their presentations for the week and my oldest did this weekly review fill-in-the-blank page.

Expansion

Here’s how we expanded on our memory for week 1.

History – We watched episode one of Drive thru History about Christopher Columbus (if you have CC Connected you get a free membership to RightNow Media – the Drive Thru History videos are on RightNow Media)

Geography – We are using Notgrass’ Our 50 States curriculum alongside CC this year.  Our 50 States covers 2 states a week so it goes slower than CC, which covers 5 states in a week.  So for us this week looked like:

• Read Unit 1 of Our 50 States (Maine and New Hampshire) (we do this as a read aloud – we don’t have the workbook and haven’t done any of the other activities so far)
• Watched the Homeschool Pop episodes for Maine and New Hampshire (these are 5-7 minute videos on YouTube that give a brief overview of each state: nicknames, flag, state bird, facts about the state, where it’s located, etc.)
• Watched the State Plate episodes for Maine (season 1, episode 6) and New Hampshire (season 2, episode 20) (State Plate is free on Amazon Prime and it is SO FUN!  Our family is loving these!  Each episode is all about iconic foods from each state.)
• We also made blueberry cornbread (Maine) and raspberry and apple cobbler (New Hampshire) from our United States cookbook.

We will cover Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut once we get to those states in our Our 50 States curriculum but if you want to do them all in week 1, here’s the info:

• Massachusetts: State Plate is season 1, episode 7 and the Homeschool Pop is here
• Rhode Island: State Plate is season 2, episode 14 and the Homeschool Pop is here
• Connecticut: State Plate is season 2, episode 23 and the Homeschool Pop is here

Science – We watched the video about the four types of tissue on Awesome Science TV (Awesome Science TV is a science video subscription – there is a whole playlist of videos that are made to go along with CC’s science sentences)

Books

I have several cycle 3 booklists that I use (they’re all linked in my Cycle 3 prep post) – I checked our library to see which of those books they had and requested those.  I also just searched “Columbus” on our library’s keyword search and picked a few other books that came up that looked good.

History related books:

• You Wouldn’t Want to Sail with Christopher Columbus
• Did Christopher Columbus Really Discover America?
• Explorers!  Christopher Columbus
• Explorers: Amazing Tales of the World’s Greatest Adventures
• Exploring the New World: An Interactive History Adventure (my boys are really enjoying this series!  I’ve never seen these before this year but our library has so many that are perfect for cycle 3!)

Geography related books (mostly stories set in the states we learned about this week but not directly about the states)

• One Morning in Maine
• Make Way for Ducklings
• Blueberries for Sal
• Miss Rumphius
• Ox-cart Man
• Time of Wonder

Science related books:

• Inside your outside

Note: we didn’t necessarily read all of these during week 1 – I check them out and keep them in a basket in our school area.  I usually read 2 or 3 of the picture books each day and the kids read some of the longer ones to themselves during their independent work time. 

ESSENTIALS

This is my 9 year old’s first year in Essentials.  We are trying to keep it simple as we get our feet wet so this is what we did this week:

• One of the worksheets from Onward each day (the ones labeled 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4)
• Copied chart A
• Did week 1 from this homophone worksheet
• Edited the history sentence (located in this week’s Onward
• Went over the IEW vocab verbally and did the vocab quiz in the book
• Wrote his first IEW paper (KWO on day 1, rough draft on day 2, finalized on days 3 and 4)

(we are not doing any spelling, CC or otherwise, at this time – I’ll add that in later as we get into a routine with the things we’re currently doing for Essentials)

We had a great first week!  It was way less overwhelming than I expected it to be – things went smoothly at home (though I was very glad the Essentials worksheets from Onward also have an answer key because I definitely needed to reference it!) and he really enjoyed writing his IEW paragraph.

We’re also enjoying

This is not directly CC related but I thought I’d share some other things we’re enjoying each week.

• I’ve heard of the Real Cool History for Kids podcast but we had never listened to it before this week.  It’s really fun!  I didn’t trying to match up the episodes to CC’s history, I just picked one at random that sounded good and we listened while we ate lunch.  We listended on Spotify, I’m guessing it’s on other podcast platforms too.
• We’re currently reading (well, listening to via audiobook) the Green Ember series.  We have LOVED this series!

Have a great week 1!

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