My Chocolate Moments

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Classical Conversations Cycle 3 Week 2

Here’s an overview of what we did at home for Classical Conversations Cycle 3 Week 2, 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)

This post contains some affiliate links.  If you purchase a product through an affiliate link I make a small commission at no cost to you.  Thank you!classical conversations cycle 3 week 2

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 together 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 – The kids learned a song to the tune of “head, shoulders, knees, and toes” in their classes  and we also still remember the song we used last time through Cycle 3 so we sang both of them during the week ((I don’t have a video link, sorry)
  • 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 use them as we go over the memory work, then on the other days I keep them in a container and the kids take turns putting them in order/playing with them independently when I’m 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 give them the timeline cards scrambled up and they put them back in order.classical conversations cycle 3 week 2 memory work

Geography – This week we started using the Seterra app for geography, which the kids LOVED!  Seterra is a free app and you can customize the quizzes, so I made one that just had the states from weeks 1 and 2 and one that has the states and capitals from weeks 1 and 2.  They are learning their states much quicker with this method than anything we’ve done in the past.

I also bought the Stack the States app because it was highly recommended.  We’ve played around with it some and the kids had a ton of fun with it, though it’s not quite as good for locating the states on the map as the Seterra app.  It’s still a fun way to get familiar with the states but you have to play a bunch to get past level 1 to unlock the other games so it’s not as straightforward as Seterra.

They also trace their dry erase maps twice each day.

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 use these presentation planning sheets to plan out their presentations for the week and my oldest does this weekly review fill-in-the-blank page.

Expansion

Here’s how we expanded on our memory for week 2.

History – The 2nd Drive thru History episode about The Pilgrims goes nicely with week 2 and so does the 8th episode about Jamestown Colony.  We actually haven’t watched either one yet but we will go back later sometime when we need to fill some time. (if you have CC Connected you get a free membership to RightNow Media – the Drive Thru History videos are on RightNow Media)Drive Thru History Classical Conversations Cycle 3

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 2 of Our 50 States (Vermont and Massachusetts) (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 Vermont and Massachusetts (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 Vermont (season 2, episode 2) and Massachusetts (season 1, episode 7) (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.)State Plate Classical Conversations Cycle 3
  • We also made banana berry pancakes with maple syrup (Vermont) and Boston baked beans (Massachusetts) from our United States cookbook.

We will cover New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware once we get to those states in our Our 50 States curriculum but if you want to do them all with week 2, here’s the info:

Science – We watched the video about the axial skeleton 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 check our library to see which of those books they have and request those.  I also use the library’s search and search for words related to our topics (this week it was things like “Thanksgiving” and “Mayflower”) to see what else our library has that are applicable.CC Cycle 3 week 2 books

This week I checked out/pulled from my stash:

History related books:

Fine Arts related books

ESSENTIALS

  • One of the worksheets from Onward each day (the ones labeled 2.2, 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4)
  • Copied charts A and C
  • Did week 2 from this homophone worksheet
  • Edited the history sentence (located in this week’s Onward)
  • Went over the IEW vocab and took the vocab quiz
  • Wrote his IEW paper (KWO on day 1, rough draft on day 2, dress ups on day 3, finalized on day 4)

We also listened to the Mr J Chart A song on YouTube that I’ve heard a lot of people recommend but didn’t really care for it.  He already has Chart A mostly memorized from previous Foundations memory work songs so learning a new tune seemed silly, but if this is all new to you you might really like it!

(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)

A note:

I always start off the year strong with lots of activities but that can also cause me to be stressed because we don’t always have time to get to every book, activity, video or other cool thing I’ve come across.  This is a reminder to me and you that it’s ok if you don’t cover everything every week.  You can skip it completely, or do it the next week, or have it on a sick day when you don’t want to do anything else or use it as a review during your fall break or the long break from Nov-Jan.

There are already several things I’ve wanted to do but just haven’t had the time to – they’re niggling at me in the back of my head but I just keep reminding myself that these will be perfect review activities for later.

Have a great week 2!

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