Classical Conversations: History

I get asked often by fellow parents about how we homeschool our kids, but I really struggle in those moments with painting a clear picture of  what our days/weeks look like. I get so excited to talk about home education, that my words come out as a tangled, jumbled mess. This is a shame because I adore homeschooling and would love for more people to consider it as an option. Homeschooling is so varied, and there are so many different ways to make it work for your family. Our little people are part of a Classical Christian homeschool community called Classical Conversations (CC). We went through Cycle 1 with CC last year, and it was a huge blessing for our family. Now we're starting our second year moving on to Cycle 2.

{Cycle 2 of CC studies World History: Pre-Reformation to Modern. We begin with Charlemagne in the Medieval period and move all the way through to Nelson Mandela's presidency in South Africa. It covers a lot of territory!}

History can be taught hundreds of different ways, but this is what history will look like for us this year.

Our history curriculum:

• Memorize the weekly history sentence from our CC Foundations Guide (e.g. Week 1: "In 800 AD, during the medieval period, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor of Europe"). This is easily accomplished by simply reciting the sentence for a few minutes each day or just listening to a musical version of the history sentence on a CD in our car (I burn a CD of each week's memory work and play it in the van while we run errands during the week).

• Notice when/where this person/event occurs in our CC Timeline (161 events that my kids memorized for the first time last year and will continue to revisit/recite each subsequent year). This is their favorite memory work song and mine, as well. I sing it while doing the dishes. In this case, when I sing our CC Timeline, I notice that "Charlemagne crowned Emperor of Europe" is sandwiched right in between "Japan's Heian Period" and "Alfred the Great of England." Both me and my kids are able to get a much better sense of exactly when in history Charlemagne's reign took place.
  

If we do nothing else, I consider this a whopping success for the week. I have never had a clear picture of world history as a student myself. I had a 4.0+ GPA in high school, graduated as valedictorian of my university, and I could not have told you when or where most of world history took place. Were Leonardo da Vinci and Plato contemporaries? While the Crusades were going on, was that when Christopher Columbus sailed to the Caribbean? Maybe. Sure. I had no clue (The answer to both is, of course, no). Without any real idea of how major world-shifting events related to one another, it was really hard to understand the "why" behind them.

Giving my kids this foundation of basic history/timeline facts ensures that as they mature, they will be able to think critically about historical events because they'll be able to integrate new learning into this internalized framework. At 4, 5, and 8 (the ages of my children), simply spending a few minutes a day memorizing our history sentence is me giving my children an education I never could have imagined for myself.
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Since I love learning about history myself, we often choose to do more than these two things when time allows. I don't feel like we have to, but I love when we get the chance to:

• Read-aloud a related chapter from an excellent history book. Not a textbook compiled by a committee, but a single history book written by a person who loves and cherishes history. For us, last year, this meant The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child by Susan Wise Bauer. I cracked open the book, located the chapter that related to our history sentence for that week, and spent 15 minutes or so reading aloud around the dining room table. After I finished reading a part or all of the chapter, I would pause to ask if one of my children could narrate or "tell back" what I had read in their own words. This was a favorite part of my kids day. It sparked their imagination as they began to picture what it would have been like to live in the Heian Period of Japan or the Golden Age of Greece. It was fun to see it transform their play time, too.* Suddenly their lego constructions were Egyptian pyramids and drawings included their attempts at Sumerian cuneiform writing. This year, we are using a 1951 copy of A Child's History of the World by V.M. Hillyer. For this week, we're reading chapter 45, "A Light in the Dark Ages" that will introduce us to "Charles the Great," aka Charlemagne, grandson of "Charles the Hammer." The chapter is six and a half pages long, so I can read it all in one sitting, break it up into snippets throughout the week, or read and reread it all week long if that's what suits my children and me. 
  
• Locate on a map or globe what place (or places) this historical person or event took place. This takes about 60 seconds maximum, but it's always so exciting when we find out that it matches up with something we've already memorized from our geography grammar in CC or if I know it's something we'll be memorizing in the future. In this case, we read from our history book that "Charlemagne at first was king of France alone, but he was not satisfied to be king of that country only, and so he soon conquered the countries on each side of him, parts of Spain and Germany" (Hillyer, 257). Yay! Last year during Cycle 1 of CC we memorized the geographical locations of the Roman Empire: Spain/Gaul, France, Germania/Germany, Alexandria, and Carthage was week 6! Now we get to spin the globe around and find France, Spain, and Germany on the map. It's like a treasure hunt and review all in one, yet it really only takes one minute of our time. 
  
• Check out related books from the library and place them in a book basket near couches, beds, or any place your child is likely to pick up a book and thumb through it. This isn't just for readers. Only my 8 year old can read, but my 4 and 5 year old love this as much as he does. Right now we have about a dozen books sprinkled throughout the house that pertain to the medieval era. Instead of spending time researching appropriate books, consider using a trusted book list already created by other CC moms to match your history sentence that week. I used this CC Cycle 2 Book List from Brandy Ferrell and simply spent 15 minutes on my library's online catalog typing in the titles she recommended for K-3rd grade, and placing what was available on hold. I got an e-mail when they were ready for me to pickup, and all I had to do was show up. They had already been brought to the front and were waiting for me so there was no need to waste time combing the shelves. I really wanted my kids to be exposed to two of the library books in particular, The Sword in the Tree by Clyde Robert Bulla and A Medieval Feast by Aliki, so instead of putting them in the basket for my kids to discover, I integrated them into our read-aloud times reading a chapter of Bulla's book each morning at the breakfast table or before bedtime and calling all the kids over to the couch to spend 10 minutes reading Aliki's gorgeous picture book. Reading-aloud is already something we do, so I'm not adding more to our schedule, I'm just curating it more carefully to add depth and color to what we are learning in CC each week. 
  
• Printing activities/resources from CC Connected (a $6 a month subscription if you are a member of a CC Community) can be a great option if you are a family who enjoys learning through notebooking. I have downloaded notebooking files created by other CC parents who have clearly put in hours and hours of their time and talent offering pages customized for each week's learning in every subject, including history. I have them saved in a CC Notebooking folder on my laptop. However, I don't print these all out. They are sitting, waiting, if one of my children asks for something more to do related to their history memory work or perhaps if the library didn't have books available on that week's topic.
  

Does that sound like a lot? I hope not. If you've gotten this far, you've probably spent more time reading this than I've spent teaching formally on history this week. And yet, I truly feel confident that I am giving my kids something beautiful and worthwhile. Little by little, week after week, I am laying a strong foundation on which (I pray) we'll build a lifelong love of history.

K'Nex catapault meets Duplo knights