As our family is finishes up our eighth year with Classical Conversations, I remember clearly the trepidation I felt as I went to that information meeting the spring of my oldest child’s kindergarten year. I went to CC’s practicum and had no idea really what I was signing up for. I had gone from hard-core, publicly schooled, full-time working woman to part-time, homeschooling person? Trust me, I get it.
If you’re considering beginning Classical Conversations, looking around for answers, or just looking for encouragement to continue, you’re in the right place. Use this information to guide you during this journey… And a few insights into what I wish I had known.
10) Family Is the Focus
Classical Conversations is lifelong family learning at its finest. The memory work with this program is the same no matter the age, and while the six year old is definitely learning at a different level than the ten year old, they both are memorizing the same baseline facts. In CC, your elementary kids of all ages learn together, and life becomes so much easier when you aren’t juggling different curriculums. We’re all in the same historical time period reading about the same people. For science, the whole family can dive deep into the solar system or animal classifications together. I can’t imagine trying to juggle multiple kids and multiple historical periods for learning.
In addition, you get to know the families at school as a unit. There are weekly family presentations which introduce all the families in your community. You will know your kids’ friends, their parents, and their siblings simply by being in class with your children. Play dates are a family affair because you all know everyone, and the kids all get to see their own friends while you talk to your parent friends. Drop off programs don’t offer this.
9) Tutors Offer Accountability
Homeschooling can put you in a bubble with your kids if you don’t fight it. And let’s face it, sometimes our kids don’t listen to us – not only as parents but also as teachers. You both need someone else speaking wisdom into their lives.
In Classical Conversations, the design for the Foundations program is that the tutor to encourages and shows parents how to work with their own kids on the memory work at home. Foundations is not a typical teaching class for the kids with explanations and projects as in traditional school. The memory work is being introduced and reviewed through games and fun activities; the deep dives are for you to do at home as their true teacher. Their spongy brains absorb the facts at CC while having fun.
In this small group of kids, the tutors know your kid, their strengths and weaknessess, and are always available to give parents extra support. Having other grown-ups in their lives will give them more even more adults to pour into and love on them. Because of this, my kids are comfortable around other grown ups. I love to watch them comfortably sit down next to their grown up friends and speak like equals. To come home from class talking about what their tutor said. The respect is mutual.
In CC, I benefit from adult peer pressure to help me make sure my kid is doing “school” with as they recite memory work and complete Essentials writing papers. Every week, I have a tutor to “report” to. Even if they don’t really know which kid knows their memory work, at least someone else has a peek into my family life. That keeps me on track. This mom doesn’t want other parents to know of her slacking tendencies! I pay a tutor and pretend that she’s holding me accountable. It’s sad but true.
8) Kids Need Other Little People
I always encourage new homeschool families to find a community even if they are not a part of CC. Homeschooling is hard without people! It’s so good for the kids to know that they are not the only family living this way and that there are people like them. My kids’ best friends are homeschool kids.
At least once a week for 24 weeks a year, I know we will be around similarly-minded families living life together. The kids have friends who also think learning is fun and who sing history songs on the playground. They get to hear about new hobbies during presentation and explore the woods at lunch while squawking tin-whistles at each other.
Most homeschoolers don’t homeschool at home. Being in a Classical Conversations community means field trips, play dates, summer activities, and friends.
Not to mention, the kids often want to work harder at home in order to be able to play the review games better each week in class. There’s a benefit to seeing the other kids know their work. Kids also don’t want others to think they don’t know the material. Kid peer pressure at its finest.
7) Parents Needs People, Too
Being an at-home parent is hard. And having these kids who go with you everywhere makes is even harder.
Stay at home parents have to seek out opportunities to make connections and see people. Being part of a CC community gives you that connection automatically. Making relationships are easier when you have something in common – you will find that CC moms have lots in common automatically. Community is so important.
Through Classical Conversation, moms have other moms to complain to tell about their week or take them meals after a new baby or see their new haircut. Maybe you’re struggling and just need to sit in the car for an hour while another mom assumes responsibility while your kids are in class.
It’s happened. The best friends I’ve had along this journey have all been from our CC group.
By the way, if you’re a homeschool dad, you’re awesome! Please get involved in the CC community, come to the after class gathering, know your kids’ tutors, and show the kids that dads are involved too. We love seeing dads at community day and especially having dads step up to tutor a class!
6) CC Teenagers are Amazing
As a whole, the homeschooling teenagers I’ve been around helped me look forward to having a teenager. I didn’t know that was possible.
Classical Conversations started with the Challenge programs – junior high and high school. Did you know that? Foundations and Essentials were developed specifically with the upper years in mind. Without understanding this fact, it’s difficult to sit in a six year old class and understand why they need to memorize a list of prepositions. The kids don’t understand what they’re leaning, and you don’t know why you should bother. Ask an older mom why this is important, and go visit an Essentials class for 4th to 6th grades. It all makes sense later.
When you’re sitting with your fifth grader in Essentials and working through verbs, ask the mom of an 8th grader why it’s worth memorizing verb conjugations. Learn how English grammar knowledge will push them forward in their studies of Latin. Then go play outside and remember your kids are still little enough to need play time! And lots of it!
Keep your eyes focused to the future years and remember that’s guiding our why for today. Seriously, go sit in a big kid class. See the 16 and 17 year olds sitting confidently around a table discussing literature with their tutor. Watch them debate important issues and relate their studies back to world events and their faith. This visit will convince you to keep the pace in the younger years. Challenge kids are awesome, and I want my kids to be like them in character, learning, and maturity.
When we jumped in to do Classical Conversations, I honestly knew very little about it other than the stereotype: pictures of cute little homeschool rooms with timeline cards and memory work posted on the wall. I guess you could say the reputation preceded itself… and, most importantly, I fully trusted the recommendations of my friends who had used it. I knew there must be a reason they had believed in the program.
Making a change to homeschooling, or even thinking about it, was one of the hardest decisions ever. One of the most difficult choices!
5) Public Speaking Fears Vanish
Every week the kids stand up in front of their peers and talk for a couple of minutes. Given that many adults list public speeaking as their major fear, how amazing is it that we start working on this from a young age? The littles often need mom to stand next to them and whisper each sentence into their ear. However, in a couple of years, these are the same kids who stand up in fourth grade and recite their memorized paper in front of a full auditorium. Public speaking is an amazing skill that most homeschooled kids (and public schooled kids) don’t have the opportunity to practice.
This not only allows them to practice speaking, but they get to know each other. They share favorite books, trips they take, family news, and even sometimes bring furry pets. Presentation time allows them to flex their speaking muscles and grow in so many ways.
4) Essentials is Awesome
This was my fifth year leading the Essentials class as the tutor. I’ve always said that, if I had to, Foundations would be abandoned before Essentials – it’s a great stand-alone program with so much goodness. Even if you have never touched grammar at home (future post), it’s completely do-able through this two hour class. Your kid will learn an amazing amount about the English language at his own pace for three years, work on writing great papers, and put his presentation skills to work presenting those papers. You and your kid are more ready than you think for Essentials!
3) One Day a Week
That’s it. For one morning a week (and afternoon if you do Essentials), your kid is introduced to their new memory work for the week. One day a week you put on “real clothes” and sit in a classroom like “real students” and get out of the door on time like “real parents”. The rest of the week it is yours to do with.
Even if you completely think memory work is a waste of time, your kids are being exposed to all kinds of good things, and you didn’t have to prepare all your own time to do it. There is plenty of time those other six days of the week to be committed to sports or music or travel or following your own little rabbit trails.
With CC, the parent is the official teacher which means I make the ultimate schedule. If i decide it’s most important to travel with the kids by myself to see Grandma out of state, that’s my call. No penalty. If I decide that my kid isn’t going to write a paper all month, that’s my right to do so. I have the ultimate freedom to make my schedule work for what my family needs.
2) It’s a National Program
As a newbie homeschooler, it’s hard to be different. So hard. For me, going with a well-respected, time-tested, homeschool methodology just made sense and helped with the transition from traditional schooling.
Since we started this homeschool journey, Classical Conversations has been our baseline curriculum now for eight years. We began in Texas and jumped right into a new community when we moved here to Georgia four years ago. As a world-wide curriculum, it’s consistent no matter where you are, and you can automatically fit right in with a new community wherever you land. Each group follows the same schedule, the years follow the same pattern, and the days are filled similarly.
Grandma has questions? Point her to the website. Dad is second guessing if it will work? Hop on Facebook and read all the success stories. You’re a military family who will be leaving the area next year? Find one of the other 2,500 communities in the US or even one of the 43 countries all over the world.
As homeschooling has become a more popular education option, the number of students enrolled world-wide in Classical Conversations has sky rocketed to more than 125,000 students since it started 25 years ago. There has to be reason for its popularity right?
1) But the Top Reason? Jesus!
Classical Conversation is a Christian curriculum and co-op which uses all the subjects to point back to Jesus. Because of that, the families you will meet are professing Christians with whom you and your children will automatically have so much in common. My kids have grown just as much in their Christian faith as they have through the more traditional subjects through their amazing tutors who lead them in prayer, scripture memorization as a group, and the interactions with God-loving families. While we can’t shelter our kids completely, we can surround them with some of the best families who love them, love Jesus, and want the absolute best for them and their education.
If you have questions about Classical Conversations, please ask away. Looking into a new program can be overwhelming as you learn new terms and theories. Seek out somebody to help or ask here!
Homeschooling with Classical Conversations
If looking into homeschool programs, check out these homeschool articles to guide through all years of homeschooling with Classical Conversations. It’s been our homeschool program for more than a decade.
- Classical Conversations: 20 Easy Ways to Rock Your Family Presentation
- Classical Conversations: Our Top Ten Reasons After Eight Years
- Help! My Kid is Entering Essentials!
- Classical Conversations Essentials: What You Need to Know
- Classical Conversations Challenge: How to Homeschool High School
- Classical Conversations And Unschooling: How To Empower Your Homeschool
If you’re looking for more information about the homeschooling teens or the challenge years? My top advice is to talk to some wise older homeschool moms who can answer all your questions to the best of their ability. Don’t be afraid to ask and ask again. Homeschool moms as a whole love to guide more families and kids to follow in their footsteps. Reach out to me here!
Thanks for stopping by my little corner! Here’s to your next adventure.
I’m Bobbie. As transplants from Texas, my family of six is on a mission to discover all of Georgia’s amazing places, experience amazing road trips across the United States, and create a homeschool life along the way.
Want to adventure like me? Reach out! I’d love to chat. Stop by my Instagram or Pinterest page to discover more of our adventures.
Want to work with me? I’d love to work with your destination and tourism board to help other family travelers see all you have to offer.
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