Classical Conversations - A Sample Day in the life of a Tutor

Here is a day in the life of yours truly as a CC Abecedarian tutor.  Abecedarians are the 4 and 5 year olds.

8:30 - arrive at our CC location to write out all the memory work on the whiteboard.  This year I have made a trifold whiteboard (found this idea on Pinterest) so I can focus on other things when I get to my classroom.  

8:50 - pray with the other tutors

9:00 - Assembly - the whole group gets together to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the Pledge to the Bible, recite and learn the new timeline cards for the week, and learn the memory verse, which builds over the course of the year.

9:30 - classes start.  In my class, we start with introducing the new grammar.  Here is a typical new grammar session. I always go int he same order: history, math, science, English grammar, Latin, geography.  Any order is fine; this is my particular preference and my board is set up to reflect this.

History: There are history hand motions available on CC Connected, the forum hosted by CC, and so the way I present the history work is to read the sentence to my students, teach the hand motions, listen to the song, and then we all sing the song with hand motions about 4 times, each time erasing some words off the board until the whole sentence is erased.  Last year, only Bear was a reader in my class; however, it is important to model the erasing at that age, because the older classes often do this. The key is to repeat the information 7 times.

Math: I alternate between

1. having the kids jump to the CC skip counting song on some foam mats, from the Dollar Tree, on which I have written the numbers,

2. using Bingo markers to dot the numbers written out on a piece of paper (in order for the young ones), and 

3. doing jumping jacks, marching in place, or following the leader while we sing the song.

Science:

Week 1 - I'll teach them my mnemonic for the classification of living things (Kings Play Chess On Funny Glass Stairs) and I'll show them this visual as I teach them the mnemonic. Kids will take turns pointing to the visual as the whole class chants the memory work.

English Grammar:

Week 1: haven't decided yet.  Maybe we'll sit in a circle on the ground and pass a bean bag around as we chant the definition.  Or perhaps we will play Duck, Duck, Goose.  The person who is "It" walks around as the class chants the definition (of a preposition, in this case) and when the definition is finished, taps the nearest person gently on the head and they race around the circle.  The person who is last to sit is now "it."

Starting week 2 I will tell them the list of words, have them repeat the words and then we will learn and practice (at least 5 more times!) the motions and CC song that you can find here on You Tube.

Latin:

I have created and used CC Connected files to make velcro boards of the latin noun cases and declensions. We will use these to have relay races in which the noun cases or declensions are separated into two piles and the students separated into two teams.  The teams will race from one end of the classroom (or hallway) to the other to put the noun cases together or the declensions in the right places.  The words would all get presented and repeated a couple of times first before playing:)

I get my velcro dots on ebay.  They are around $10 or so for 1000 (which is 500 pairs of velcro dots).

I will be copying these out on cardstock enough times so that the students can also play memory with them to change things up or for review.  My students really liked Latin memory last year.

10:00 - snack and bathroom break

10:10 - presentations.  While some tutors allow snacks during presentation, I find that eating while listening is a huge distraction for everyone, including the presenter.  For presentations, the students come up to share something for about 2 minutes.  Usually for the 4 and 5 year olds, this is very much just show and tell.  

10:30 - Art - for the first 6 weeks, we are focusing on drawing.  You can see my plans for that here.

11:00 - Review - this is the time during which we review the memory work from the past 6 weeks.  I'll need to do a separate posts about some review games my class likes.

11:30 - Science  - there are usually science experiments or cool hands-on activities (like owl pellet dissections as one example) during this time.

12:00 - dismiss for lunch.

Every tutor is different, but this is what a typical day in my classroom would be.