UPDATE: If you are looking for our Actual Plan for Cycle 3, it is here!
Hey, planning parents (waves)! Don’t you just love the process of planning for the next school year? The activities, the crafts, the projects, the copywork! And do you ever look back over those carefully crafted plans and think, “When are we ever going to have the time to do all this?”
Or maybe you are still in that hazy-headed place where all plans are perfect and every day of the next year will hold happiness in the palm of its hand because you did it ALL.
Well, I don’t want to burst the beautiful bubble you have fashioned for yourself and your family…
but this is real life.
And real life is a bit more complicated than any lesson plan can parse.
This is our second time through Cycle 2 for Classical Conversations. And this time, I am really…no really, planning what we are going to actually do.
And it may surprise you to know that it is super simple!
Our Actual Plan
We aren’t really doing much. Promise! I have already shared here our routine for Grammar review with Classical Conversations. And I also have begun to share the One Thing More ideas I have for adding on to the science, geography, OR history portion of our year. So, today, I am hoping to help you simplify the add-ons to the grammar.
By the way…I fully subscribe to the idea that the grammar is enough! It truly is. But there are many more hours in the day and there are things our kids will attach themselves to – and sometimes that is school-related (bonus!) Why not offer them a simple feast of activities to engage their brains in the direction of the grammar they are learning each week?
In case you are wondering where we are on our Classical Conversations journey, here are the details of our homeschool. I currently have 2 CC age students: a 3rd grader and a 1st grader. We have been part of CC since we began homeschooling 4 years ago. We also have a very-interested 3 year-old and a 2 year-old (who requires much attention to stay out of trouble). Our community day is on Tuesdays. And we are what I would call laid-back.
When I introduced our Simple Classical Conversations Reveiw, I told you how simply and quickly we got memory work review in. Thus, this Actual Plan for Cycle 2 will fill you in on what we will do that relates to Classical Conversations.
UPDATE: If you are looking for our Actual Plan for Cycle 3, it is here!
Mondays
Monday is our typical Latin review day. We will be using Rainbow Latin Conjugations in our few minutes of review. We have hand motions we do to help us remember the beginning of each conjugation, as well. If you are looking for One Thing More for Latin with your learners, here it is.
And I am adding art tutorials during little-kid rest time. We all LOVE watching and participating in Nana’s art videos. Not only do they demystify the creation of art, they always result in actual works of art!! This is typically a lead-learner activity for us – I love to sit next to my kids and feel like an artist, too. We are going to try to work through her I Drew it Then I Knew It series for medieval history.
Tuesdays
Tuesday we will do coloring sheets for memory work created by Amy Snider Design. I printed these out and had them bound – my students are already asking when they get to use them. As I said, Tuesdays are our community day. I do as little work in the afternoon after we get back as possible. We do math (Saxon for both students), poetry, and some sort of CC-related copywork. We did a different set last year, but these are a bit more exciting because of their simplicity and beauty. (You can get them at her Etsy shop and get a discount by using code: 20OFF)
Also, I have officially decided that our going and coming to community days will be a perfect time for the kids to watch Song School Latin together. They are currently obsessed with watching stuff in the car (we sort of got a new car at the beginning of the summer…long story). And my husband and I have decided we like it because we can have conversations with minimal interruptions.
Wednesdays
Wednesday we will be using our updated skip counting cards to play games and review math facts. I also need to teach my memory master candidate the times tables this year. We have already added Ross King’s multiplication table songs on our Spotify favs. I will likely also purchase Multiplication Facts that Stick to try to throw some of that knowledge at her using games. We loved Subtraction Facts that Stick this summer.
English will be built upon our previous years’ work through First Language Lessons. I cannot tell you how much we enjoyed this curriculum in our first three years of homeschooling. It fits very nicely with CC definitions of terms with a few modifications. The songs we have in our heads as a result of the review portion of First Language Lessons will likely never leave us. But they always put us in good stead to remind us quickly of the definitions and lists. I also have a number of simple posters I made last time we went through the cycle that we will be using for our review time.
We are also embarking on IEW’s Bible Heroes program in a one-room schoolhouse setting. Putting some of the things we are seeing in the memory work into practice is what I am going for outside our typical review time.
Thursdays
We will attempt to average some super simple history extentions about every other week on Thursday. Listening to the History and Timeline during clean-up and review time, is on the agenda as well. That’s it. That is all that is necessary. If you feel you need a little more, I can direct you to an awesome One Thing More list for Cycle 2 History.
Fridays
Friday is our typical science day and science is a special case around here. I do super simple review on our review days. I make it fun on the first week a science fact is in the Grammar, by playing hide and seek with the items on the list. We have a non-reading kid hide Post-it notes with the list items. The reading-kids will search for them in the right order and bring them back one at a time. Each time an item is brought back we will say the question and answer it, adding on until the answer is complete. It is super simple. But it is a kid-favorite around here.
We typically don’t add much to the science memory work, but I think my oldest student is going to choose her One Thing More to be science. She couldn’t seem to forget the DIY slushie project she has to look forward to. If you are looking to expand science, too, check out our One Thing More list for science.
What’s Missing
You may have noticed Geography is missing from the schedule above. That is because Geography is reviewed every day around here. It is our hardest subject. It is also our favorite in some ways because of the awesome songs CC Happy Mom creates for each cycle. My kids (all of them) love her songs and reviewing geography is never a chore when we have those songs.
We also created a One Thing More for Cycle 2 Geography. It has some fun and simple ideas for making geography a little bigger for your second time through a cycle.
You will also not see the myriad places where bits of memory work pop up in our day. As a homeschool mom my radar is always up for those quick opportunities for review. Delighting with my kids when memory work comes up in a practical or unexpected place is one of my chief joys.
Stick and Sand Review
I am trying something new this year to encourage my kids. While not a full blown tutor board, I wanted to give my kids something visual, like a tutor board, to look at during the week. But I don’t have the space for a fold-out board in my school room.
So I came up with a super simple stick-in-sand memory work template. It fills the requirement of being hand-written by me (as CC prefers) and is compact enough to laminate (!!). I included Bible verses that correlate in some way (however obscure) to the memory work for each week. There are 24 pages – one for each week of Cycle 2. It hits all my joy buttons at once! I hope you will enjoy it, too!
This Post Has 4 Comments
Please tell me you will be doing a post for Cycles 1 & 3, just like the one for cycle 2. As well as the extras for science, Latin and geography? I absolutely love your homeschool approach!
Thanks, Amanda! We are in it for the long haul. I need to throw some links in for our geography, Latin and science one thing more series, I guess. I will be here for you (almost like friends)! Blessings to you.
Thank you Leah!
Thank you for these resources. They are amazing! We will be starting year 6 of CC and love the program so much!