How to Make the Most of CC’s Challenge Program

Welcome to our CC Challenge-Specific Page

I’m dedicating a corner of my website (which is mostly about teaching art using the classical model of education) specifically to how we made CC’s community-based Challenge curriculum work in our family and community. On this page, I cover some general ideas about Challenge. However, the majority of my tips and files can be found on these other CC level-specific pages: A, B, 1, 2, 3, & 4.

This page is part of our series on how we homeschool with Classical Conversations. 
Check out a full list of all the resources on our main CC page here.

Please also talk with your CC Director. These pages are one mom’s advice and each CC group does things a little differently!

Table of Contents for This Page

Organizing for Challenge
Summer Prep
CC’s Challenge Guide, in digital format
The Student Planner
Keeping a Timeline Journal / Book of Centuries?
Grading / High school

And now for some legal stuff

I try to use affiliate links whenever possible. So, if you use one of these links I may get a few pennies from it. However, the cost to you will be the same. I promise that I never choose what to suggest to you based on the benefit I might receive from it. You can learn more about our affiliate policy here.

Classical Conversations has also asked me to tell you that “References to Classical Conversations do not constitute or imply endorsement by the company.” I’m guessing you knew that, but now we’re all on the same page.

Organizing for Challenge

Each of my children (do I still get to call them that when one is taller than me now?) has chosen to organize their Challenge supplies differently, so I’ll try to share both when applicable

The Guide

I have my OWN copy of each guide (I took the guide to Office Depot and they made me a copy). This allows me to give my guys full reign in their copy of the guide and I think that helps them take ownership. If I had to share a copy of the guide with them, I’d either go crazy or refuse to let them write in it and neither of those would be good.

I leave ALL the pages in their guide. Some parents remove the articles in the beginning, but I keep hoping the boys will read them. The articles are well-written and explain the “why” behind a lot of what we do. During his ChB year, my oldest had a friend ask him why he was learning Latin. I pointed him to that article in his guide and we pulled out a few key reasons. Hopefully, that stuck with him more than if I’d just rattled off a few reasons.

My younger son wants it inside his giant 3-ring binder. My older son likes his copy of the guide spiral bound, by itself.

We segment our guides with tab dividers or sticky tabs, marking the sections we think will be most useful. For example, here’s how we broke down the Ch A Guide:

Table of Contents
Semester Snapshots
Weekly Assignments
Appendices
Logic (Math)
Grammar (Latin)
Research: Natural Science & Science Fair
Research: Biology-Anatomy
Reasoning
Exposition
Debate
Extras

Last, we add a simple post-it note to mark the week 1 tasks in the Weekly Assignments section. That post-it note moves every week and will have to be replaced a few times over the year.

The Challenge Binder

Each student has their own 3-ring binder with a “Pocket Tab Divider” for each strand. Pocket tab dividers have a pocket where you can slide an 8.5×11 sheet of paper in and out without removing it from the 3-ring binder. This means they’re wider than a regular tab and will stick out past any page protectors in the binder. (yay!)

I’ll talk more about what goes behind each tab below when we talk about each subject

The Challenge Bookshelf

We own a lot of bookcases, so each kid has their own section of a bookcase. We have several magazine file boxes (as pictured below) for workbooks and spiral books- without a box, they tend to fall over and get in the way. I have yet to find cheap magazine file boxes that fit our big 3-ring binders, so they sit on their own. Exposition books tend to sit together without a box as well.

Five Common Topics- Circle Sticker

Summer Prep

I know many families like to do some prep work for the year during the summer. If your student is not a fast reader, reading some of the novels ahead of time might be helpful, however, their retention will need to be really good if they aren’t going to need to re-read them to write a paper on them.

In our family, we use the summertime to catch up on math and work on other projects (like Boy Scouts).

CC’s Challenge Guide, in digital format

Did you know (as of fall 2023) the full challenge guides are now available in digital format on CC Connected? They are stored in week 7, which is only available after you’ve paid your full 1st-semester tuition. You can’t download the guide, but you can print a few pages, which is handy if you don’t have your guide yet!

I try to direct you to other especially helpful CC Connected resources throughout the other challenge pages, but I never include them on my site since CC holds the copyright to everything there.

The Student Planner

Most students start keeping a planner in Challenge. The CC Challenge Guide lists out a week’s worth of work and it’s up to you and your student to decide what to do each day.

Both of my sons have used this printable student planner. It’s a MS Word document so we tweak it as needed.

Keeping a Timeline Journal / Book of Centuries?

Some students keep a Timeline Journal (aka Book of Centuries) in the Challenge years. Some people start in Ch A and others start in Ch 1. (A few even start before that!) Here’s some helpful info about what it is and how to maintain it!

Grading and High School

This section just keeps growing as I help my own kids move through high school and prepare for college. So, I moved most of the info that used to be here on to it’s own page: Homeschooling High School. It covers topics like:

Grading
Transcripts
Graduation Requirements
Record Keeping
Testing
4-year Calendar of key events
Other Resources

Homeschooling High School

There are a few very CC-specific things I’ll repeat here:

My Grading Spreadsheets: I’ll be sharing my Excel files with you on each Challenge page (A, B, 1, 2, 3, & 4). For each of these, I start with the CC guide and go from there. So, there are a lot of abbreviations that probably won’t make sense until you read the guide.
Transcripts: CC Connected has a great transcript tool now, but you do still have to type in all the course names (more info on the High School page!).
Blue Books: I generally don’t give a grade for the student’s blue book exam, especially in the lower levels of Challenge. Instead, we embrace the idea that this is a time to celebrate and show off what they know. Also, I usually just go with whatever the tutor is giving as a blue book exam, so it’s not always what we’ve focused on at home. Sometimes there will be a paper or presentation that is both on their Blue Book and on my grading sheet. In that case, I’m counting it in their grade!
CC’s website also has some great tips for homeschooling through high school. Whether your student is in Challenge all 4 years of high school or not, you can begin with CC’s sample transcript. Pictured here is an older version, but you should be able to find a current on in the catalog each year (it was page 101 in the 2025 catalog) and adjust

Help Contribute!

Now it’s your turn! Let me know how you make the most of Challenge!

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