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Latin like MCT? Never seen this discussed....


Eileen Aroon
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My very different children just eat and breathe Michael Clay Thompson books. The entire first level was magical. My DD9 is pretty right-brained, creative, and visual so the diagrams, pictures and personification appeal to her. My DS7 is logical and seems to see things through the eyes of an engineer. And yet, he also begs for MCT. It is incremental, interesting, and logical. MCT gives him the tools to help him pull sentences apart and look at them.

 

So here is the question: we all want to find a Latin program that has the same stuff we like about MCT. Does it exist?

 

We have tried Prima Latina twice and it lives in our memories as one of the most infamous homeschool books we have ever used.

 

Also, we have Caesar's English, and it is okay, definitely our least favorite MCT book so far, but not unusable. What I want is for my kids to have the experience of learning an organized language and working with foreign grammar so they can understand English better.

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RFWP (MCT's publisher) is working on putting out a Latin program, with the first level due out this spring. From their web site, here is a summary:

 

Dr Frances Spielhagen’s Latin curriculum is unique in its use of an extensive and unprecedented library of images of the ancient world to create a learning experience unlike any other Latin curriculum.   The approach is natural and inductive rather than translation.  The children are challenged to understand the Latin from the illustrations and to develop vocabulary and grammar gradually in the natural thread of language learning.

 

I was able to see a preview, and I would say it looks like I will find it similar to how I find MCT's writing program; that is: fun, engaging, motivating, and beautiful - but lacking the explicit, how-to instruction we need here. So based on what I saw, I would guess that I will get it, but use it alongside a more traditional, structured Latin program, just as I use MCT alongside a more structured writing program. (I do find the other portions of MCT very complete, and we are just in "Island", and again, I only saw a preview of the Latin, so take my view for what it's worth.)

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I suppose it depends on what particularly you like about MCT.  I like MCT for his enthusiastic, contagious love for the subject, and how he creates interest in the allegedly dry details, showing how they contribute to the whole experience instead of glossing over them, and to me Orberg's Lingua Latina has a similar feel.  He's a man who loves Latin and really *gets* it at both an intuitive level and at a technical level, and it shines through in his books.

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We used Getting Started With Latin alongside MCT. I did the first half orally (my daughter took over after that and did the rest on her own) and it would lead to lots of discussion. At the age your oldest is I think it would work fine. You might want to go a little slower, or not. It builds an excellent foundation for understanding how Latin works and took my daughter into Lingua Latina. 

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Jenney's Latin is what we use.  It is highly grammatical and directly assumes knowledge of the English grammar in order to use the text.  The translations are of ancient works, only reworked so that they use simpler sentence structure and vocabulary you have already learned.

 

They are by Pearson, and my son LOVES them.  It is a high school course, so we take it slowly, but they have cemented his knowledge of the English grammar so completely that I cannot imagine what we would have done without them.

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