Classical Conversations

This year our family has added Classical Conversations to our homeschooling experience. It's been a perfect fit for us and the girls are loving it. Our group meets on Thursdays at a local church. There are 21 families in our community, and about half have participated in CC before. 

Classes are divided up into age groups, so the girls are in separate classes. Here's a general schedule and description so you get a better idea of what this is about..

9:00-9:15 

• informal group worship (we are going through some hymns and I offered to play violin for them)

9:15-9:30

• family presentations (each family is assigned a week and shares a little about themselves for 3-5 miutes)
• group memorization (we are working on Exodus 20: 1-17 KJV)
• group announcements
• classes dismissed

9:30-10:00

• new weekly memorization - each week new memory work is presented in the following categories: history, science, math, geopgraphy, english and latin)

10:00-10:30

• weekly science discussion and experiement

10:30-11:00

• presentations - each week the kids are assigned a skill (like narration or poise) and a topic and are expected to give their presentation to their class

11:00-11:30

• fine arts study (they will cycle through art techniques, artists, music basics and tin whistle - spending 6 weeks on each area)

11:30-12:00

• review - they go through the current week's memory work again, plus review past weeks if there is time.

doing a science experiement

the review cube in Kayleigh's class

Sydney giving her presentation

Now for a closer look at that weekly memorization...(ust to give you an idea) Every week is different, but here's what they learned in week 1.

HISTORY:

Age and Facts Timeline (there is a timeline song that covers the entire year's worth of timeline facts and lasts 13 minutes. The girls already know about 40% of it)

• Age of Ancient Empires
• Creation and thh Fall
• The flood and the tower of Babel
• Mesopotamia and Sumer
•  Egyptians
• Indus River Valley Civilation
• Minoans and Mycenaeans

History Sentence: Commandments 1-5, Thou Shalt...

1. have no other gods before me
2. not make unto thee any graven image
3. not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
4. remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy
5. honor thy father and mother that thy days may be long upon the land the Lord thy God giveth thee. 

GEOGRAPHY: (in class they locate these places on a map)

Fertile Crescent

• Mediterranean Sea
• Mesopotamia
• Euphrates River
• Tigris River
• Sumer

ENGLISH:
A preposition relates a noun or pronoun to another word


SCIENCE:
What are the classifications of living things:

• Kindgom
• Phylum
• Class
• Order
• Family 
• Genus
• Species

LATIN: Noun Cases

• Nominative ~ Subject
• Genitive ~ Possessive
• Dative ~ Indirect Object
• Accusative ~ Direct Object
• Ablative ~ Object of the Preposition

MATH: Skip counting and multiplication tables - each week they get two new numbers