She has some excellent short stories. "Roman Fever" is a favorite of mine.

Hmm.. I thought that was a reference to the pronunciation. LC uses Christian or Ecclesiastical Latin.

There's The Story of the Ancient World by Christine Miller. I read it aloud to my 6th adn 4th grader this year. It covers Biblical and Ancient History. Mostly it's Biblical History and it touches on other countries--Eygpt, Assyria, Babylon, etc--as they intersect with the Bible.

IT is never too late to start applying CM methods in your homeschool. True, most of the CM-style curricula are pretty structured, but it doesn't have to be. Here is a good article about transitioning to CM. Hope it helps.

Don't forget Memoria Press. I love the Famous Men books and I really love the MP Workbooks!

I'm LCC. CLick on the link in my signature and check out my sidebar. I've got sample schedules. We love LCC.

To get daily lesson plans that schedule out all the subjects, you need to get the VP Scholar's lesson plans. The other materials do NOT schedule anything for you. Although if you want to do it on your own, it is not difficult.

Yes. I'm not planning on printing it out. I'm going to read it off my laptop. But you could just print out the sessions with the answers. It would be very costly to print it all out.

Is this for your 13 year old? LC1 is for younger beginners. That's why it moves so slowly--it's for 3rd graders. You should take a look at the new Middle School Latin program from Memoria Press, First Form Latin. I am beta testing it now,and it is awesome! It will be available this summer, complete with dvds.

I'll have to think about this and look through my FF materials when I have time. In theory you could use the workbook to supplement Henle, the order of concepts is a little different. The explanation of how to run the drills is in the TM though. So, that's a thought. Do you have a younger one coming up who could use FF? I'm keeping my older in Henle and my younger in FF. And I'm using the FF drills with my Henle student.

Paige, Yes and no. I am not coordinating the two or anything like that. I think that the philosophies of the two are very compatible, but I prefer the slower pace of KISS. The grammar in CW is a little too intense too early for me. So, what I am doing right now is applying whatever the KISS lesson is to CW. Right now, we are doing CW Poetry. This week I had my dc circle every noun in the poem--which can be pretty difficult--and then find every subject and verb--also very difficult in a poem. We had to think. In the fall when we start up Homer and Diogenes, I think I'll do something similar. I'll spend some time this summer thinking about it. That said, the second grade KISS workbook will be more than adequate for Aesop. I'm still thinking through all this, but at this point I am going to let the KISS pace determine what grammar concepts we use in CW. It shouldn't be hard. CW teaches to black out parts of a sentence that you haven't learned yet and just parse the parts you do know. HTH> ETA: the lessons REALLY are taking us only 5 minutes!

I am glad that you find the drill sheets useful. You may also benefit from reading the articles on Latin Recitation on the Memoria Press website. Great practical suggestions for drill. Conducting a Latin Recitation and Memorizing the Latin Grammar HTH

Well, you've got a couple of options. First Form does repeat what he already learned, but it also has new material on verbs. You could go through the new material and then quickly review the chapters on nouns. Or, and this is what MP is saying, go directly into Second Form--out in beta this Fall. Second Form will start off with a review of First Form, where he could pick up the info on verbs. It really just depends on his needs I guess. But you could easily get through the new chapters in First Form between now and the Fall and start Second Form then. HTH.

First Form includes explanations in the student text, but there is additional material in the TM. But, yes, the DVDs will be available this summer.

Larissa, I am beta testing First Form right now. First, Second, Third, and Fourth Form will replace Henle First Year.The First Form series covers the complete Latin grammar. After completing the First Form series, students will move into Henle Second Year (Caesar's Gallic Wars.) MP is recommending First Form for any student in at least 4th grade who has completed LC1. I am moving my dd10 from LC2 to First Form because First Form is a much better book. Much more thorough explanations, better drills, etc. HTH.

Do you mean daily or how many weeks? A 5th grader would probably take a whole school year, but the seventh grader could do it in a semester. But, for those ages, I would recommend Memoria Press' new middle school program, First Form Latin. It's in beta testing right now, but will be available this summer.

Mars Hill Classical School in Cincinnati uses SOTW.

Dr. Vavra revamped the website and moved items around, grouped by levels. I think if you just follow the sequence on the website, you'll be good. And of course the graded workbooks are new and super easy to follow as well. And yes, the answer keys are in the workbooks as are the instructional materials.

Probably. The author doesn't recommend starting before 2nd grade. You might be able to introduce some of the concepts, like picking out subjects and verbs and just move very very slowly. Choosing sentences from your reading or copywork and asking your child to identify the subject and verb of each sentence--spending about 5 minutes a day. I wouldn't try to do the whole workbook though.

The grade 3 workbook starts with a very short review of level one material and then proceeds to level 2 material. You basically have 2 options. You can proceed through the levels at your own pace using your own models--that's the Independent Levels section. Or the author had made it easy for you by providing grade level workbooks with real literature written at that grade level. Right now he is not finished. Ultimately he wants to have each level available for each grade. So if you were starting in 5th grade, he would have a 5th grade level one book. That hasn't happened yet, so most people are starting their elementary children in grade level 2. The instruction and concepts for grade level 2 (independent level 1) are the same no matter what grade you are in. The difference is that the models are lower elementary--Beatrix Potter and such. Does that make sense? So, in answer to your question. Master level one, then move to level 2. It is incremental. There is a short review at the beginning of each book, but it is very short, it is primarily new material. Just download the level 2 workbook.

Alison, I don't know what grade your dc are, but you may want to consider starting with the 2nd grade workbook. Each level is incremental and the 3rd grade book assumes the 2nd grade knowledge. And the 2nd grade book is NOT baby at all. The concepts covered in that workbook are the exact concepts covered in JAG (4th and 5th grades). My daughter switched from JAG to KISS, so I went with with the 2nd grade book. She has no idea what level the book is. The exercises are challenging. And I should point out that the 3rd grade workbook covers advanced concepts, including some I have NEVER seen covered in high school grammar. We are going to move as quickly as we can through the 2nd grade book, parking ourselves on any concepts she struggles with. There's no rush to get to that 3rd grade book. Scroll down this link until you get to the workbooks. Click on doc to download.

Kysha, It was reading your blog entry that intrigued me enough to start poking around the website. I have been a grammar teacher for ages and I experienced many of the same complaints Dr. Vavra did about the teaching of grammar. His approach and philosophy really resonated with me. And since his materials are available for FREE, I've got nothing to lose!

KISS grammar.

Might I recommend Memoria Press's new program First Form Latin. It is in beta testing now and will be available this summer. Latina Christiana is really an elementary introduction to Latin. First Form is meaty! Search the boards for First Form and you should find my glowing reports of the program. HTH!

Well... if you must know ;) I used to love Shurley grammar--the first couple of years. But then it drove me crazy that it was basically the same stuff year and year. It just didn't go anywhere (part of the problem, I know, is that Shurley is designed in such a way that a new student in 5th grade can start on grade level. That's why there is so much repetition. KISS's levels are incremental and don't repeat. Master one level and then move onto the next.) KISS has everything I liked about Shurley and Analytical Grammar ( which is also similar to Shurley) plus it is based on real literature and doesn't have you repeating the same stuff over and over. I also like his approach to teaching some of the concepts as well. It reminds me a lot of how I used to teach grammar when I taught middle school. I just did my own thing because I hated the ABEKA text we used. Also, Shurley uses canned textbook-type sentences. I like the idea of really wrestling with sentences and trying to understand how each word functions in the sentence. Often there is no easy answer. But of course what I like most is that I can cover grammar in 5 minutes a day! I'm streamlining. I want to pull sentences from our other course work and analyze them--each child parsing the parts he or she has learned thus far. Another plus is KISS is free and Shurley is pricey :D I also want to add that there are some great essays on the KISS website as well. I especially liked one that argued that the best way to teach grammar to lower elementary is to READ, READ, READ.