Classical Conversations Cycle 3 Week 3

Here’s an overview of what we did at home for Classical Conversations Cycle 3 Week 3, 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 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 and her song for weeks 3-4 (YouTube)
• Math – The CC app (if you don’t have the app it’s also here on CC Connected)
• Science – No song, just hand motions for the 3 kinds of muscle
• 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)

A lot of people make a YouTube playlist for each week (so, all the videos from week 1, then another with all the videos for week 2, and so on) but I prefer to make playlists for each subject because we often like to review by subject instead of by week and that makes it so easy to go through all of it.  So I have playlists for cycle 3 geography, latin, and English.  Just a tip if you’re going to be setting up playlists on YouTube!

Hands 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.

Geography – Tracing dry erase maps 2x a day and doing the quizzes/games in the Seterra app.  They are loving Seterra!  At the end of week 2 I edited the custom games I’d made to add in the week 3 states and turned it into weeks 1-3.

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 3.

History – The Liberty’s Kids series is fantastic – my kids LOVED it last cycle!  The first episode starts with the Boston Tea Party so it’s perfect to start this week.  There are 40 episodes covering events from the Boston Tea Party to writing the Declaration of Independence.  You can watch them on YouTube or buy the DVDs or see if your library has them (they are available through the Hoopla app at my library).

The 3rd Drive thru History episode about Boston’s heritage will nicely with week 3.  We’re still “behind” on these but will catch up eventually when we have a rainy afternoon or screentime evening or a break week or whatever. (if you have CC Connected you get a free membership to RightNow Media – the Drive Thru History videos are on RightNow Media)

Last time we did cycle 3 we had a tea party at home for week 3 – it was so fun!  I made a variety of teas for us to try and we ate things like tea sandwiches, scones, thumbprint cookies, etc.  They loved it!  We will be doing it again this year but didn’t have time to do it this week so maybe next week.  Here’s a quick video from our last one though.

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 3 of Our 50 States (Rhode Island and Connecticut) (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 Rhode Island and Connecticut (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 Rhode Island (season 2, episode 14) and Connecticut (season 2, episode 23) (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.)

See all the State Plate + Notgrass Our 50 States match ups here

• We also made coffee milkshakes (Rhode Island) and election cake (Connecticut) from our United States cookbook.  I almost skipped the coffee milkshakes because I didn’t think my kids would like them but the boys LOVED them!  That was surprising.  The election cake was…unique.  It had chocolate chips, dried fruit, raisins, and slivered almonds.  It also called for mace which I didn’t even know was an actual spice before this!  I left that out but even so, it was not yummy.  No one liked it, including me (and I like pretty much all sweets!).   I’m glad we gave it a try but it was definitely not something we’d repeat.

We will cover Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina once we get to those states in our Our 50 States curriculum but if you want to do them all with week 3, here’s the info:

• Maryland: State Plate (season 2, episode 11) and the Homeschool Pop
• West Virginia: State Plate (season 3, episode 4) and the Homeschool Pop
• Virginia: State Plate (season 3, episode 7) and the Homeschool Pop
• North Carolina: State Plate (season 2, episode 19) and the Homeschool Pop
• South Carolina: State Plate (season 3, episode 2) and the Homeschool Pop

Science – We watched the video about the types of muscles 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  to see what else our library has that are applicable.

As a reminder, these are not necessarily the “best” books that pertain to this week but it’s what my library had.  Make sure you check the booklists I’ve linked because your library may have others on those lists.

This week I checked out/pulled from my stash:

History related books:

• The Colonists Revolt: An Interactive American Revolution Adventure
• The Boston Massacre: An Interactive History Adventure
• Fighting for Independence: An Interactive American Revolution Adventure
• Resisting British Rule: An Interactive American Revolution Adventure
• Can’t you Make Them Behave, King George?
• George vs George: The American Revolution As Seen from Both Sides
• Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales: One Dead Spy
• Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales: Lafayette
• If you Lived at the Time of the American Revolution
• The Boston Tea Party (by Russell Freedman)
• The Boston Tea Party (Graphic History)
• What was the Boston Tea Party?
• Paul Revere’s Ride

(My boys love the Nathan Hale books!  We’ve owned most of them for a while and they read them over and over.  The Interactive books are newer to us, I just recently found them at our library, and my 7 year old in particular is enjoying those.)

Geography related books:

• Madeline at the White House
• The Worst Class Trip Ever

Fine Arts related books

• The Turn-Around, Upside-Down Alphabet book

ESSENTIALS

• One of the worksheets from Onward each day (the ones labeled 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3)
• Copied chart E and verbally went over chart A
• Did week 3 from this homophone worksheet
• Edited the history sentence (located in this week’s Onward)
• Did one ATS (analytical task sheet) sentence each day.  In community they used their ATS trivium tables but at home I had also printed off the preprinted ones from Onward and my son chose to use those instead
• Went over the IEW vocab
• Wrote his IEW paper (We took a day off for labor day so this week we did KWO on day 1, rough draft on day 2, dress ups and final draft on day 3)

(I have been researching spelling options and bought a used copy of Sequential Spelling.  We haven’t started it yet but I think we’re going to give it a try.)

Have a great week 3!

P.S. Don’t forget that it’s ok if you don’t do all of this stuff or all of the things you have planned!  Your child(ren) will still learn SO much and you can always save those things you didn’t get to for weeks when you’re on break.

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• Classical Conversations Cycle 3 Ideas and Prep
• Classical Conversations review: Thoughts after our first year
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