I've mentioned before that this is our first year homeschooling our boys.  It is also our first year being part of a Classical Conversations community and working through their rich curriculum.  For elementary aged, grammar stage children, a classical education primarily means memory work. "Pegs", that's what I've heard these memorized facts referred as.  Memory pegs are hung in place so that later, as the child's ability to understand increases, great pictures can be hung upon them. Eventually the walls of a classically trained child's mind will be filled with pieces of understanding, but it all began with "Pegs" - simple, memorized pieces of information.

That said, at 4, 7, and 9 my children want to know what some of these facts are all about and so we delve into what we are memorizing (to varying depths) at home, reinforcing the memory work with applications and learning.  History and Science facts are our favorite rabbit holes to chase down throughout our homeschool weeks.

I'm going to list a couple of resources that have helped me to reinforce our weekly Memory Work, giving us opportunities to sketch simple pictures that can already be hung upon the "Pegs" we are learning.

Brandy at Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood provides more recourses than I could ever find the time to enjoy with my boys, but her book list for Cycle 1 has been a great blessing for our family!

Karen at Wisdom and Righteousness has put together 4 lap-books for each Classical Conversations Cycle / year (there are three Cycles in all). Each quarter includes the science, history, geography, Latin, English, and fine arts covered each 6 week period.   They are organized so that the children (with your help) can record what they've learned and display it on a grand poster board. It's quite a fun project and one your tactile learners will really get into! I have decided to instead combine all four lap-books into one great folder. We do the projects then glue them onto 8 x 11 sheets of white paper then put them into our binder. Take a look at all of Karen's resources!

Today we used one of her worksheets to diagram "some kinds of leaves and leaf parts", then went on a nature hike to find examples of what we had memorized earlier this week.  These pictures and their plastic baggies will make their way into each of their Memory Books as well.

Needles

Bracts

(dried) Tendrils

The other resource I've utilize this year is the copy-work generator found at WorksheetWorks.com. I enter CC's history sentences for each week's copy-work then print up a wonderful worksheet for each of my two big guys. I use the "Pre-Cursive Handwriting" option for my 7 year old and "Cursive Handwriting" for my 9 year old.

This is all so new, I'm no expert, which is why I am deeply grateful for the ladies who are blazing a trail for so many others.  Thank you Brandy and Karen to sharing with us what you've done with your families.  It's a true gift and one that's been received many times over!

I used this quote on another post this week, but feel it's applicable yet again:

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

- Isaac Newton