Foundations (K4 - 4th Grade)

Learning GRAMMAR together is fun!

Seriously.

Our Foundations Programs provide a Classical Christian community for homeschool families with students in grades K4-6th. These power-packed programs typically meet once a week for twelve weeks in the fall and twelve weeks in the winter/spring months. Based on the classical model of education, families meet weekly to introduce new memory work (or grammar of a subject) and review old memory work using Classical Conversations’ Foundations Guide as the heart of the curriculum.

What Do We Cover?

A trained tutor creatively introduces the memory work and leads the classroom time. The memory work is divided into 6 subjects: 

• timeline/history
• geography
• math
• science
• Latin
• English grammar

In addition to the memory work, students also participate in a fine arts project/lesson, a science project, and an opportunity to practice oral presentation skills each week.

Fine Arts

During Fine Arts, we cover one of the following: 

• basics of drawing
• music theory
• special art projects
• exposure to orchestra and classical composer

Students enjoy this mixture of hands-on activities and listening skills.

Snack Time Isn't JUST Snack Time
Each week students have an opportunity to practice oral presentation skills, ranging from simple show-and-tell for the younger students to more structured and prepared presentations for the older students. The goal of our presentation time is for our students to become comfortable standing, talking, and presenting in front of their peers.  And this happens during the best time of the day -- snack. 

Weekly Science
Students work with the tutor to have a hands-on science activity time. The goals here are for students to become familiar with the scientific method and to begin to discover God through His creation and order in subjects like chemistry, physics, astronomy, physical science, and more. Students and parents rave about the time they spend together each week.

Need A Bigger Goal?
There is an opportunity to participate in an optional Memory Master track, where a student strives to memorize all the information for that year and recite it to a few adults at the end of the year. Through the Memory Master (MM) track, students are “pounding in” the grammar pegs of history, Latin, English grammar, geography, math, science, and history timeline they learned throughout the year.

Essentials (4th-6th grade)

Love learning the essentials of … language, writing, and arithmetic?

This dynamic program provides Classical Christian community for home school families with students in grades 4th-6th. 

This program, which emphasizes language and writing “grammar” while also incorporating highly-dialectic lessons, is designed to reinforce language arts and structure, writing, and arithmetic mastery.

The Essentials program meets once-a-week for twelve weeks in the fall and twelve weeks in the winter/spring. Students meet in the afternoons after the Foundations program. 

If there are younger siblings, our community has a Siblings Essentials class where they work on schoolwork brought from home, a craft, and participate in extra play time. 

A trained tutor helps strengthen the “essential” subjects of language arts and structure, writing, and arithmetic.

The language arts and structure portion employs Classical Conversations own The Essentials of the English Language (EEL) Guide which includes lessons that provide a mixture of grammar and dialectic learning tools used to establish language structure understanding. The unique EEL approach takes students beyond “the worksheet” and the ubiquitous fill-in-the-blank method. Upon a firm foundation of memorized vocabulary, rules, and lists, students build strong language skills through the use of a series of analytical tasks. Students are taught how to thoughtfully analyze sentences and language structure, resulting in stronger language skills, which also strengthens students written and oral works.

The writing portion is based on the method of the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) by Andrew Pudewa utilizing IEW’s signature method of structure and style. This method teaches students how to organize their writing through different writing structures, while also providing stylist techniques that make a student’s writing more engaging. Students often practice writing skills on the same subjects that are being studied in their current Foundations cycle.

The math portion focuses on reinforcing the “essential” elements of arithmetic through challenging math games and problems. This program is designed to complement your home math program by drilling speed and accuracy with basic operations of arithmetic.

This highly-dialectic program, along with Foundations, is academically charged, and is great preparation for the later Challenge programs. 

Challenge Programs

Our Challenge programs provide classical, Christian community for homeschool families with students in 7th-12th grades. Based on the classical model of education, students at this age move into the dialectic and rhetoric phases of learning. Students utilize our academically challenging curriculum, which is appropriately named the Challenge Curriculum.

This curriculum involves Saxon math, Apologia sciences, classic literature, writing, debate, and much more. Students develop and strengthen the life-long learning skills of grammar, exposition, debate, logic, rhetoric, and research. This curriculum is supplemented by weekly classroom time with a trained Challenge Director/Tutor.Many parents feel inadequate to homeschool their students through the high school years. 

The Challenge programs typically meet once a week for fifteen weeks in the fall and fifteen weeks in the winter/spring months.

Our Challenge programs can help by modeling how to school with confidence during these very important years. Being involved in our Challenge program also helps direct you through your transcript and college preparation needs by keeping you well-informed and providing the tools you need for your record keeping.