At Home vs. In a Co-op

In a Co-op there are many benefits to using Classically Catholic Memory in a co-op setting, not the least of which is increased motivation (on the part of the students and the parents!) to master the material. It is also a lot of fun! We have used CCM in a co-op setting for two years, and my children love co-op. Somehow, just doing the memory work in a classroom with seven or eight friends of the same age makes it “fun”!

Having a number of children in the program allows more variety in the kinds of activities that can be done to help the students practice the material. I’ve described many of the activities that can work well in a co-op in the Teacher Text from each year, but I’ll give one example of an activity that we did frequently in our co-op. For timeline, rather than simply having individual students put timeline cards in the correct order, in my class in co-op we put ourselves in order. I gave out a timeline card to each student to hold, and chose another student to put everyone in the correct order. Seven- and eight-year-olds can have a lot of fun with this! They would lead their friends by the hand to the “right” place in line, spin some around, and then move them again until they thought everyone was correctly placed. Then, we had “judges” decide if the order was correct or not, and if not, what had to change. It is easier to do activities like this in a large group, rather than with just one or two students.

We also added certain elements to our co-op that are not part of the official CCM material. For instance, we added a public speaking element to give the children practice in speaking in front of a group. Every week, every student gives some sort of presentation to their class. The presentation can be on any number of possible topics, but needs to be “educational”. Students have shared poems they have written, brief reports on books they have read, information on history topics that they have learned about at home, and even things like information on the various dog breeds or the positions of soccer players in a soccer game.

Fine Arts is another subject that we have added to our CCM co-op that provides variety in our morning. Every week that we meet, the children spend 30 minutes on either art or music; the art combines art history and actual art projects related to the time period the children are studying in history, while music focuses on becoming familiar with famous composers. I’ve included more suggestions in the Teacher Text on how to add this component to the CCM program.

One of the most significant parts of our co-op mornings has been coming together at the beginning of the day for prayer and a religious presentation. Every family takes a turn leading the opening prayer and then doing a presentation for the entire co-op on some aspect of our Catholic faith. These family-led prayers and presentations have been a tremendous blessing to our group. They help to remind us of our focus: learning to know and love God more deeply. They help us to see CCM as part of this goal. They also greatly increase group cohesiveness and help in forming deeper bonds with one another. Topics have included the lives of various saints, the canonization process for saints, Lenten practices, other seasons and feasts of the liturgical year, Marian apparitions, the Brown Scapular, the choirs of angels, Gregorian chant, the feast of Divine Mercy, and more. Even very young children in the families participate, sometimes by holding up pictures they have drawn related to the topic. Older children share information about the topic according to their age, as do the moms. Occasionally, even a few dads come to participate with the rest of their family.

To give an idea of the amount of time that might be allotted to the various subjects and activities in a CCM co-op, here is the schedule we have followed:

Sample Schedule

8:40: Gather in the parish hall. Announcements are made. One family leads the prayer and does a family presentation (10 minutes). We then go over Religion and Latin together in the large group setting. The parent who teaches the Religion component reviews last week’s material and presents the new week’s material, and the children practice it several times (5 minutes). The parent who teaches Latin follows a similar format (5 minutes). We then recite the Pledge of Allegiance together.
9:00: We break into age groups: 5- to 6-year-olds, 7- to 8-year-olds, 9- to 10-year-olds, and 11- to 12-year-olds, and head into the classrooms. We also have a four year old class which is doing a Catholic preschool program unrelated to CCM, and an older group of 13-14 year olds who spend half the morning moving quickly through the CCM material, and the other half of the morning working on writing projects and literature discussions. The church allows us to use their nursery, so the mothers who do not have a teaching role head to the nursery with the children who are 3 and younger.

All classes might then work on the subjects in a different order, but here is a schedule that one class might follow. For every subject, the basic format is to briefly review the last week’s material in that subject, then present and practice the new week’s material while doing any appropriate activities to teach and to reinforce the material (suggested activities to teach each subject are given in the Teacher Text).

9:00-9:15:      Math
9:15-9:30:      Timeline
9:30-10:00:    Science (outdoors if possible)
10:00-10:15:  Snack, while half the students do their weekly presentation
10:15-10:30:  Geography
10:30-11:00:  Fine Arts
11:00-11:10:  Great Words
11:10-11:30:  History
11:30-11:45:  Student presentations (half of the class)
11:45-12:00:  All classes come together again in the Hall and pray the Angelus.
12:00-12:30:  Mass, for those who choose to stay; others depart.
12:30-2:00:    Lunch outside on the picnic tables and social time by the playscape.

During one of our years, we also allowed extra time at the end of one co-op session mid-year and at the last session of the year for presentations by the children and for competitions in the various subjects. For presentations, children could present any of the CCM material that they had mastered and wanted to share with all of us. Some recited a poem from that year’s material, others said a prayer in Latin, and a few recited the timeline. We then had competitions in history, science, and geography; children could choose one subject to participate in and earned points for correct answers (or, in the case of history, for being able to recite a history sentence when prompted with the first few words). All of this was a great review of the material and very motivating for the children. At the end of the year, all of the children were given certificates congratulating them on their work in our Classically Catholic Memory co-op.

After a co-op session, during which the new material for the week is introduced and practiced, we allow about 20 minutes a day at home to review and work on mastering the material for that week. We also play the CD frequently. Using this schedule, the children generally have mastered the material by our next co-op day, which is two weeks later.