Lueker Munchkins - School & Play: First Day of Classical Conversations

Sunday, October 6, 2013

First Day of Classical Conversations - 2013

The Monday after Labor Day, we began Classical Conversations. While we have been doing a lot of the CC work since late last winter/early spring and throughout the summer (as well as play dates with our CC friends) we hadn't had the opportunity to attend the classes. The girls were both very excited to begin our official Classical Conversations school year.

Jackson and McKinley weren't quite so excited but had the opportunity to tag along anyway... :)

Ready with new backpacks from Grammy

We did class pictures for the yearbook the first day (and since I took them I decided to include my munchkin's pictures in this post :). Reagan is 6 1/2 yrs old and in the first grade. Kennedy is nearly 5 and in Kindergarten.

Jackson, 3 years old, and McKinley, 6 1/2 months old, get to chill out in the nursery class and at home participate in projects as they wish. We are working on preschool work with Jackson this year. We are currently focusing on recognizing letters and numbers. Miss McKinley is working on being the cutest and happiest baby around and doing quite a good job if I do say so myself! :)

I spent some time in Kennedy's class the first morning and was able to take a couple of pictures of her work. I was impressed with how well she was able to trace the continents since we had never tried this at home. She also did a great job of identifying each of the continents and oceans during an M&M game (on the table).

I was completely amazed by this bird she drew. Her teacher provided some instructions but she did this entirely on her own. Missy K is becoming quite the artist and I also have to say quite good at listening to and following directions when we're doing schoolwork or projects.

One of the reasons I have been looking forward to joining Classical Conversations is the weekly science experiments the classes do together. The teacher leads the students through each experiment using the Scientific Method (purpose, hypothesis, material, procedure, results and conclusions). So far I have been very impressed with this aspect of the classroom instruction the girls receive. Here is Missy K working on making her hypothesis as well as recording the results.

This was such a great demonstration of the speed required of satellites in orbit. In this experiment the tree was the sun, the teacher was the earth and Missy K was the moon. As you can probably tell the moon has to move significantly faster than the earth in order to stay in orbit.

I didn't get to spend as much time in Reagan's classroom the first day, but I did get there near the end to see part of the review. The kids loved playing a version of "Headbands" with the Timeline cards. They had to ask each other questions in order to determine what they had on their head. For example Creation & the Fall, The Flood & the Tower of Babel, Mesopotamia & Sumer, Egyptians, Indus River Valley Civilization, and Minoans & Mycenaeans were some of the choices. Reagan had the Minoans & Mycenaeans on her head and she figured it out when it was her turn. Way to go Miss Reagan! :)

It appears our first day completely wore out my two little snuggle bunnies. :) These two don't actually sleep together, but Tim wasn't home and McKinley wasn't asleep when Jackson was ready to go to bed and he wanted me to snuggle with him. The three of us lay down together and I simply couldn't resist this photo op when to my surprise they both fell asleep. They were too precious and sweet sleeping snuggling together with their little arms crossed and pacis in their mouths. :)