Tips for surviving (and loving) the 1st year of Classical Conversations

Well folks, we made it through our first year of Classical Conversations!  And truly, we loved it.  I cannot think of a better program for my girls and me.  We learned so much and had so much fun!  My girls love to sing and each week's memory work has a song to go with it, so they learned the info almost effortlessly.  I am amazed and impressed with the program and thought I would share what I had learned to help my girls learn such vast amounts of information.  I have tons of friends who are considering the program and they have all asked what we do at home to supplement the one morning a week that we meet with our tutor and friends.  So here are my thoughts:

There are 3 basic things that we do: our Memory Board, our itunes playlist, and a summary binder of all the weeks' information. 

1.  Memory Board.  This has been so helpful!  We only go over CC info about 2-3 times a week and only for about 20-30 minutes.  That is truly all it takes.  And the girls are always excited to take a break from our tablework (math, phonics, handwriting, etc) to pull out the board and start singing and dancing to our songs.  Even Abbi loves to do our memory board.  For great instructions on how to make a tri-fold memory board, visit THIS LINK.  But you can really make it however you would like.  I ended up putting 2 weeks of history, science, math, and geography on the board at a time (one for review and one for new information).  This way I made sure that the girls did not forget anything from the previous week.  I started out by printing off the week's information every Sunday, but sadly did not always have time to do it and we got behind.  I finally stumbled across power point posters for the entire semester on CC Connected and printed the entire second semester off at once.  Let me tell you, that is the way to do it.  It was so nice to have everything ready when it was time to update our memory board each week!

2.  Binders of the year's information:  I originally did this for my own sanity, so that I would not lose any of my timeline cards or posters for the memory board.  I was surprised to find that Karis and Karlie loved to pull out the binders and just sing through them!  It turned out to be a great way to review.  I did not mandate a time for reviewing in this way, but the girls usually did it on their own at least once if not twice a week.  I tell you, they love those songs!

This notebook is organized very simply... I didn't even use tabs to divide the subjects.  I basically just put all 26 weeks in order by subject together.

I just put the binders on the shelf with all their other favorite books so they could get them whenever they wanted:

3.  ITunes Playlist:  CC has provided songs for all the history, timeline, and some of the math information that the girls memorize.  CC Connected has songs uploaded by other parents for everything  else. (Some of them are great and some of them are really annoying.)  Since my girls love to dance around and sing so much, I uploaded a song for each and every piece of memory work.  Then I would randomly play the playlist throughout the week as they were playing. 

Extra helpful information:

1.  Mystery of History audio Cd's --  My girls learn so much history by doing the timeline and history sentences that there is no need for me to try to fit in another history curriculum with our other homeschool work.  However, The information they learn is short and concise and it is up to me to flesh it out and help them understand it better.  I know a lot of other CC families use Story of the World to complement CC history, but I decided to try MOH because it was more biblically centered and at this point I felt like my girls needed that.  We will probably use SOTW CD's also when they are in Middle School, but I wanted a firm foundation for the younger years.  And I have been so pleased with it!  My big girls listen to books on CD every day at naptime (since they no longer sleep) so these CD's were perfect to give them that historical background to what they were memorizing without taking any extra time from our day.  Karis really enjoys these CD's and will choose them at least 3 days a week.  Karlie chooses them every now and then also.  The first set is absolutely wonderful, beautifully intertwining Biblical History with Secular History.  The second set containing the early church and middle ages does contain some violent descriptions (martyers, battles, etc) so even though it is from a great Christian perspective, the parent will want to preview before deciding what is appropriate for the children.  All in all, though, we have really enjoyed these CD's and can't wait for the 3rd set to be finished!

2.  CC Connected: Only $6 a month and super helpful.  All CC parents can upload their posters, videos, songs, and helpful tricks for memorizing the informtaion. This is where I find all my posters for our memory board and my songs for our itunes playlist.

3.  CC iphone or ipad App -- I didn't get this until the second semester because I didn't have a smartphone until we moved, but my girls loved this!  I let them play with the app each morning while I brush and fix their hair and even Abbi loved to see the pictures and hear the songs.  Honestly, if you download the app, you don't even really need the teacher's book.  It is fabulous for reviewing old material especially.

4.  Half-A-Hundred Acre Wood blog -- there are tons of blogs out there with lots of CC info, but if I had to pick just one to follow, I would choose this one.  She has great ideas and also does a lot of link-ups so you can see other bloggers' ideas easily.  She has planning pages, booklists for each cycle, review games, and much more.

5.  "Blobbing" the continents:  After reading Leah Bortin's book, "The Core," (which I HIGHLY recommend if you really want to catch the classical education vision) I decided to have the girls start practicing drawing maps.  I was surprised at how much they enjoyed it!  I had seen Book 7 of the Draw, Write, Now series recommended and it did really help the girls in the beginning.

Here is Karis' very first freehand map.   Very basic, but she actually really enjoyed making it and showed improvement each week!

After a she got good at the basic map, we added in the 5 major circles of latitude

Her first map with the 5 great circles:

We will gradually add more and more detail to our maps and begin making the continents in their actual shapes :)

Kindergarten and Preschool schedule/ ideas

A friend recently asked what I do all day with my girls because she was wanting to get an idea of pre-school for her older toddler. I thought I'd share my response here:

Our general schedule is very flexible -- I learned not to write specific times because nothing ever goes exactly as planned with so many little ones:

1. breakfast, clean up, get dressed

2. Breakfast notebooks -- I've made notebooks for the big girls with things they are working on: daily calendar counting, weather graph, tracing names and addresses, map tracing, numbers, shapes, colors, etc. Most of the pages I put in sheet protectors and they use dry erase markers everyday and then erase. My Kindergartener also has handwriting, phonics, and math worksheets. My toddler does any number of things during this time: drawing on our dry-erase board, puzzles, taking all the tops off our markers, etc

3. Classical Conversations review - I have a display board that I put their memory work for the week. My toddler actually likes to do this because it is mostly songs to go with each poster and they dance around and sing.

4. Outside time, lunch

5. Naps -- the big girls listen to books on CD for the first hour and then I do the eldest's reading lesson and practice while my toddler is still napping. If she naps long enough we do spelling on the dry erase board which they think is great fun (with my preschooler I usually just give letter sounds or blends and I help her write the letters)

6. Free play or outside time while I cook dinner.

7. eat dinner, clean up for Daddy, play with Daddy, bedtime routine

So that is the general routine (only about 3 days a week, really, because of CC co-op, our mommy playgroup, Sunday, and my husband's day off). My preschooler is at the point now where I write things with a highlighter and she traces it and will attempt a few letters but tires easily and that is fine. The early Bob books (Alphabet and Pre-reading skills) are great for toddlers as well. My girls always loved the tiny books with funny pictures so she might sit for those even if she is not that into reading. Also, my girls loved the Sound Box books by Jane Moncure and they were all at my library so you can probably request them here. You could get a couple a week and focus on those letters with your toddler if you wanted to. But honestly, I've found the easiest way to teach letters is by doing a letter puzzle with them. They learn it without even trying! And then just practice counting up and down in games like hide and seek and whenever you see multiple objects in books. And then just keep lots of books on hand and read as much as she will allow so it comes naturally when she is older. And thats all I can think of for the littles. They really don't need to know much and do too much schoolwork. I personally think playtime is very important at that age! The main thing you need to do is read, read, read to build her vocabulary. Since she doesn’t have a big attention span yet, use books as a transition... one or two before and after naps, mealtimes, playtimes, etc. It helps with the transition to different activities (which is difficult for that age) and soon her attention span will grow and she will be asking you to read more and more books at a time. And really, that is all she needs at this age. Nursery Rhymes are great at this age because it teaches them rhyme and meter. A lot of them don’t make a bit of sense, but the little ones love them, especially if you check out a book that is illustrated beautifully. Also, there is a Wee-Sing nursery rhyme Cd that my girls absolutely LOVE. It has made road trips so much easier and they have memorized tons of them effortlessly.

Favorite Christmas Books

This is the second year that I have done the "Christmas book present a day" tradition with my girls and we love it!  It is a lot of work to wrap 50 books but totally worth it!  Some of them I own (I have my own tradition of purchasing one Christmas book from Amazon each year) but most of them I just request from our local library.  I thought I would share some of the books that we have enjoyed this year in case others might want to start this tradition and wonder how in the world they could find that many Christmas books!  Let me tell you, this is but a sampling of Christmas books that are available.  I have so many others that I can't wait to read with my girls!  I will be adding onto this list as we read more.  (Disclaimer:  We do not "do" Santa Claus with the girls, but treat him as just another fun story like Frosty or Rudolph.  Because of that, some of these stories might include references to Santa and we enjoy them.)

Picture Books of Songs:
Frosty the Snowman by Nelson and Rollins
The Twelve Days of Christmas by Gedde
On Christmas Day in the Morning by Sweet
The Little Drummer Boy by Keats
The Friendly Beasts by dePaola
The Night Before Christmas by Moses
The Night Before Christmas by Tudor
Good King Wenceslas by Neale or Ladwig

Stories of Christmas from around the world and different ages:
Marmee's Surprise (A Little Women Story) by Kulling
One Hundred Shining Candles by Lunn
Nine Days of Christmas: A Story of Mexico by Ets and Labastida
What's Cooking, Jamela? by Daly
The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree by Houston -- one of my favorites :)
The Gingerbread Doll by Tews

A Little House Christmas Treasury by Wilder

Christmas Stories from Grandma's Attic

Apple Tree Christmas by Noble

The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Wojceichowski

The Gift of the Magi by O Henry

Christmas in the Country by Rylant
An Early American Christmas by dePaola
Christmas in the Trenches by McCutcheon
Shooting at the Stars the Christmas Truce of 1914 by Hendrix

Picture books:
That's Not My Angel by Watt (Usborne)
The Story of Christmas by Pingry
The Usborne Advent Nativity Book (a puzzle Book)
A Christmas Story: A Sparkling Nativity Play by Priddy books
Merry Christmas Charlie Brown (Look and Find) by Schultz
Mortimer's Christmas Manger by Wilson -- my girls' all-time favorite Christmas book!
Room For a Little One by Waddell
Snowmen at Christmas by Buehner
Bear Stays up for Christmas by Wilson
Who is Coming To Our House? by Slate
Song of the Stars:  A Christmas Story by Lloyd-Jones
The Nativity by Vivas
Gingerbread Baby by Brett
Gingerbread Christmas by BrettChristmas in the Big Woods by Wilder
One Baby Jesus by Pingry
Christmas Cookies:  Bite-Size Holiday Lessons by Rosenthal
Great Joy by DiCammillo
Angelina's Christmas by Holabird
Fancy Nancy Splendiferous Christmas by O'Conner
Christmas Tree Farm by Purmell
The Donkey's Christmas Song by Tafuri
Christmas Farm by Ray
B is for Bethlehem
Christmas Cakes by Ferri
Christmas in the Country by Rylant
The Twelve Days of Christmas Cats by Daily
Christmas in the Big Woods by Wilder
Why Christmas Trees Aren't Perfect by Schneider

The Christmas Cookie Sprinkle Snitcher by Krause
Christmas Mouse King by Chaconas
Mooseltoe byPalatini
Gus and Grandpa and the Christmas Cookies by Mills
The Family Under The Bridge by Carlson
Prairie Christmas by Van Steenwyk
Henry the Christmas Cat by Calhoun
The Christmas Story The Brick Bible For Kids by Smith
Christmas in the Barn by Brown
The Little Drummer Mouse by Mayer
Christmas Tapestry by Polacco
The Christmas Boot by Wheeler
A New Coat for Anna by Ziefert
An Orange for Frankie by Polacco
Christmas Trolls by Brett
The Nutcracker by Jeffers
The Most Precious Gift by Crisp
The Carpenter's Gift by Rubel
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Robinson
Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree by Arry
The Little Fir Tree by Brown
Santa Claus and the Three Bears by Modugno
The Family Christmas Treasury: Tales of Anticipation, Celebration, and Joy
Christmas in Noisy Village by Lindgren and Wikland
The Invisible Thread by Schroff

Longer Christmas Books:
The Jesse Tree by Willy -- kind of an advent storybook book that goes along well with our daily reading and ornament -- the older man in it is a little grumpy and I kind of tone down his words when I read it to the girls because they might not understand why he is so grumpy.  But it is a great accompaniment to our Jesse tree advent!
The Nutcracker by Helbrough (Usborne)
The Christmas Story by Heyer
The Pine Tree Parable by Higgs
One Wintry Night by Graham
Father Fox's Christmas Rhymes by Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux
Why Christmas Trees Aren't Perfect by Schneider
The Crippled Lamb by Lucado
The Christmas Cup by Patterson
Bake Through the Bible at Christmas by Bentley-Taylor and Moore
The Imagination Station: Danger on a Silent Night by Hering


Story behind the Legend books:
The Story of Saint Nicholas: The Real Story of the Christmas Legend by Stiegemeyer
The Story of Saint Nicholas: More Than Reindeer and  a Red Suit by Odden (Voice of the Martyrs)
The Legend of the Candy Cane: The Inspirational Story of our Favorite Christmas Candyby Walburg

The Legend of the Christmas Tree by Osborne

Popping an elbow back in place (yes, you can do it yourself!)

We just had a short-lived trauma tonight when Karlie's elbow popped out of joint.  She was in excruciating pain.  We tried distracting her with Backyardigans (which we reserve for such special occasions), but it was obvious the pain was not going away.  I had learned the technique for popping a shoulder back in joint, but it didn't work for the elbow.  I finally searched youtube and found a video to show me how to do it.  Within seconds, my happy girl was back. 

So this is my golden tip for the night:  If you have little kids, learn both techniques ASAP.  They are super easy, only take 2 seconds to perform, and will save you hours of pain and time at the ER.  And it is easier than having to search Youtube when your three year old is screaming in pain!

A natural approach to lice removal

This was the post I hoped to never have to write.  I've had super thick and long hair almost my entire life, and lice has been at the top of my list as one of my worst fears ever since I was old enough to hear about it. I thankfully managed to go 31 years without any more than the sympathy itching I always get when I hear of someone else with lice.  But you can imagine my utter horror to find it on one of my girls now that I live in a house with 4 girls!  Add to that the fact that we have a ridiculous amount of stuffed animals and baby dolls and I won't even mention the state my house was in the day I found it.  And company was coming to stay with us in two days.  And the thought of putting chemicals on my sweet girls' heads just made me sick to my stomach.  To say that I felt incredibly overwhelmed was a huge understatement!

As soon as I found a patch of nits in my daughter's hair, I immediately reached for the coconut oil.  My husband teases that I use coconut oil for everything, but in this case I was super glad I used it!  I had remembered reading somewhere that coconut oil smothers lice and I immediately covered each of my girls' hair and myself as well.  I called Mark to go buy us a special comb and then we set to work throwing things in plastic trash bags and in the washer and dryer.  After leaving the coconut oil in our hair for several hours, I combed everyone's hair.  Thankfully, I never saw lice in anyone else's hair so I think we got to it fast enough so that it did not spread.  I did find 2 actual bugs in my one daughter's hair, and I cannot tell you how glad I was that I had used the coconut oil so that they were dead rather than running away from me!!!!  A month and a half later with no signs of a re-infestation, I finally feel safe and confident enough to say the natural approach worked.

I did a bit of research that first night to see what I needed to do to keep them away.  THIS article helped me the most.
Here is what I learned:

1.  Coconut oil really does work!  But you still have to comb out the nits.
2.  Rinsing hair with apple cider vinegar before shampoo helps remove the glue holding the nits so they come out easily.
3.  High heat kills both lice and nits.  Just about everything in my house went through our dryer.  And we dried all my girls' hair with the hair dryer for the first three weeks just to be on the safe side. 
4.  Neem oil and tea tree oil also kill lice.  So the 2nd day I was paranoid enough to do another coconut oil treatment and I added both essential oils to the coconut oil. 
5.  Here are two natural products that are good for killing lice.  I didn't have time to get them and managed fine without them, but I thought they sounded good enough to mention, especially if you have a worse infestation than we suffered: Theraneem Organix Shampoo an Quit Nits Complete Head Lice Kit (a homeopathic and essential oil nit removal kit)
6.  I washed and dried all the sheets and blankets 3 days in a row, then did it every other day for a week just to be on the safe side.
7.  We bagged up each and every stuffed animal and baby doll with hair for 4 weeks.  (My house stayed a lot neater during that time!)
8.  We did the oil treatment and washed their hair and combed it 3 days in a row and then every other day for a week. (Did I mention that I was really stressed and paranoid?)  Thankfully, we never saw anything after the first day, but all the extra work might be the reason it didn't come back. 

One School Year Down and Ready for Another....

As we approach the beginning of a new school year, I decided to evaluate last year and see what I learned... here are my thoughts:

The bottom line? I absolutely LOVE homeschooling!  I am passionate about education and get ever so excited about not only what my girls are learning, but also what I am learning in the process!  I love having my girls home all day with me and although we've had our share of unproductive or down-right bad days, I wouldn't change it for anything!

My absolute favorite part about homeschooling?  Without a doubt it is spending hours of our week snuggling on the couch reading my all time favorite childhood books to my girls.   That is definitely my favorite part of our day!

My downfall?  Curriculum.  I'm a nerd.  I love books.  I love it all.  I want to do it all.  I want to buy each book I see.  I always plan waaaaay to much.  You remember my "great plan" for the beginning of the year?  Yeah, I pretty much only followed for a few days.  It was too structured for a baby with a changing schedule (who didn't want to follow "my" schedule :).  And it didn't leave enough time to take advantage of those "teachable moments" or to really dig in deep to our favorite read-alouds.  I was also going to do a "Letter of the Week" theme for Karlie but soon found out that she had learned all of her letters and sounds already from Karis and was pointless.  So I just did phonograms with both of them instead.

The best advice given to me?  A sweet friend named Jessica who has 3 precious stair-step children (even closer in age than mine!) told me not to try to start it all at once.  To start one thing, build it into a routine, and do it well for a week or two or even a month before adding something else.  Then work on doing those two things til we were set in the habit and ready to add something else.  Very simple, but priceless advice.  It worked.  My girls thrived on doing the one bit of schoolwork I had them do every morning and then got ever so excited each time I finally added another piece to our routine.  We ended up with only 3 real schoolwork periods: a short 10 minute breakfast memory board, a longer reading time on the couch, and a half hour table work time in the afternoon.  "Preschool" really doesn't take long. (If you want to see how our schedule ended up, you can clickHERE to see a longer version of this post on my family blog.)

Favorite Curriculum/ Books we used:
For Teaching Karis to Read:
The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading -- the girls loved the initial alphabet rhymes but the reading part was not super exciting.  Still, it has a great simple phonics and grammatical progression and is exactly what Karis needs.  I am more than happy with it.
Alphaphonics -- I take turns with this and the above to give Karis some variety and to help with fluency.  She likes that the letters are larger.
Bob books: She reads me one story each school day and they get progressively more difficult.  It has been great to use them as we go through our phonogram cards because she sees how the phonograms help her figure out words.  I just get these from the library.
The Writing Road to Reading and phonogram cards  --  The book is great and I am certain I will utilize its techniques next year since Karis is actually writing more now.  The phonogram cards are key -- there are only about 70 key phonograms in the English language and once a child can recognize them, she can figure out how to read almost any word.  They have REALLY helped Karis take off with her reading.  We memorize several a week and say them each morning as we do our "breakfast memory board."
Explode the Code Workbooks -- she absolutely LOVES her workbook and I am thrilled with the effortless way it teaches her to read and practice her handwriting as well.  This is probably her favorite "reading resource"

Chapter "Read-Alouds":  Our favorite part of the day is curling up on the couch with a good book!  I absolutely LOVE Sonlight's reading list for preschool and kindergarten.  We did not buy the curriculum, but instead I just got most of the books from the library.  There are a few great collections that I purchased from Amazon, but most of them are at our library.  I also requested books from the library from THIS classical book list.  

For this year:  We plan to do Classical Conversations for our science and history foundation and I will add read-a-louds and activites to supplement as I have time.  (Probably not too many the 1st year as I get used to the program.)  I plan to continue with our current phonics materials and Sonlight read-a-louds and add Saxon math to our schedule as well.  And I think that should do it!  I am very excited about the upcoming school year!