I guess I don't understand the question. If you write them all out, and look at them, they are all kind of related in form to each other, so that once you've got is, ea, id... memorized, and hic, haec, hoc, the rest go pretty easily. -

No, no one knows how to RSVP anymore. Do not get me started...

This page has audio recordings of a bunch of classical latin passages read by classics profs using the restored classical pronunciation.

I like the Anki system a lot. Works on the phone, desktop, ipad, web, can show text or images or sounds. Handy to sneak learning in during car trips and other lost moments.

I did something similar last year, but instead of one book, our library has a set of 50 (plus maybe one for DC ?), each about 30 pages, filled with pictures. Obviously, rather pricey to buy the whole set, but if your library has it, it is a great resource. I think series is called "This land is your land" (?)

This seems like a good idea, then you realize, holy carp -- I'm recording 18 hours of Olympics a day, and watching one hour a day. At this rate, I won't see the closing ceremonies until New Year's!

It is a lot of work, but the method is simple. Find the set of noun paradigms in the back of Wheelock. Memorize them. Write them down, over and over again.

1) Never fall behind. 2) You need to memorize many things, and many different types of things. For memorizing paradigms, I like the Dowling method. It is gruesome, but it works. Get yourself a brand new notebook, and quickly memorize the noun paradigms, until they are in your short-term memory. Then, write them down: e.g. for 1st declension: casa, casae, casae, casam, casa, casae, casarum, casis, casas, casis (with macrons). Pick an example for each gender noun in each of the five cases, and the funny 3rd declension i-stems. Write out this table 100 times, over the course of several months (should take about 5 minutes each time). When you are done, you will never be able to forget them. Then do the verbs. 3) A little bit every day is better than a big push once a week.

Forgive my ignorance, but what's a cottage school? I think we often put too much emphasis on textbooks and methods. How good is the teacher at the cottage school? How much Latin do you know? That's what I'd base my decision on. A good teacher trumps a bad book and vice versa.

Funny, but as an avid reader growing up, I had exactly the opposite problem -- there were many words I had only read in books, but never heard spoken, so I totally bungled the their pronunciation.

Some non-academic things to do to get ready: Get used to walking. A lot. Comfortable, yet somewhat dressy shoes (for all of you!) are key. I don't know where you live or what your lifestyle is like,but you'll probably want to find clothes to bring that are somewhat more dressy than your typical American wears, yet travel well.

What age is your dd?

I don't have any experience with this particular course, though I've heard great things about it. I don't think you need any supplements. If your DC memorize better with flash cards than other methods, it is much better to have them make their own flash cards. To prepare, I'd make sure they know English grammar pretty well before starting, for example, know the difference between "who" and "whom". If they've got that down, learning how to do memory work is key. Getting started memorizing paradigms wouldn't hurt, either.

Our library allows us to check out high quality reproductions of famous artworks. This works great for us, due to limited space.

Not surprisingly, books written in the Victorian age, which were often serialized and intended to be read out loud, work great as audio books (and are long enough to fill a 12 hour car ride). Dickens is a favorite for these here.

I just couldn't let this go, because Latin is so easy to pronounce, especially the restored Classical Latin pronunciation. There are no silent letters. There are trivial rules for where the emphasis is, with almost no exceptions. Every consonant makes only one sound. There's just a handful of dipthongs, and they are always dipthongs. Each vowels make one of two sounds, and in most texts all the vowels are marked as to which sound they make. It should just take one lesson to teach you everything you need to know about Latin pronunciation. I think you'd be hard pressed to find another language easier to pronounce. The reason I'm saying this is that kids pick up on what parents think, even when we don't verbalize it. Even if you don't think this now, it is useful to tell your kids how easy it is to pronounce Latin, especially compare to, say French or Chinese, where tone and inflection are subtle for non-native speakers to hear, but make a huge difference in the meaning of words.

In addition to all the great suggestions so far (Ticket to Ride, Uno, etc.) we always had fun by modifying classic board games for little kids. For example, my kids "played" monopoly starting when they were 5 (?) by taking turns rolling the dice, moving that many places, and the first person to make it all the way around the board won. No money or any of that. Similarly, playing scrabble together, everyone sharing tiles and helping spell good words was great family fun that could involve people of all ages.

I like the idea of trying to disprove, that seems the most scientific to me, but I'm not sure that's sufficient -- the idea is that following the trivium is the most effective way to get to the endgame, I think. Also, large-scale randomized tests on real human kids seems rather barbaric. I hope we can get beyond quotes, though -- a lot of the problems in these areas stem from what I think your initial question was. That is, anyone can propose a theory, and talk about it to death, but testing it in the real world is the real key. For example, I'm sure that SWB's kids are going to be outstanding human beings. But is that because of her methods? Or just because she happens to be a great teacher, and could be successful with any number of methods. Or is it because she's given them a great environment to grow up in? Are these even correlated? Someone else, in another thread, was talking about how her adult peers (friends? relatives?) who grew up in a world that didn't value education, and they had teen-age level conversation at the dinner table, only about pop stars and tabloid fodder and such. And yet, despite their ignorance, (or maybe because of it), I bet they had no deep dissatisfaction with their life.

I really like what you are getting at here, but I'm not sure how a researcher would go about it. There are no end of educational theories, but how would a researcher show in some scientific method that, say, the trivium theory of mind development is correct for most (some ?) kids?

Who in "the city" have you talked to? The big guys who cut the cable? The city's insurer? The risk manager? San Antonio is a big place, and I'm sure the left hand doesn't know what the other 20 left hands are doing.

I wouldn't sent them a bill, (just yet), but I would call the city first. Where did this happen, on your lot or public property? Finally, no matter what the cable company says, you should make sure you aren't being billed for those days you are without service.

Vocative is a case, not a voice. In Latin, we tack different endings on to nouns to indicate their grammatical role. This may seem a little odd, because English doesn't really do this too much, except in limited way. Take the noun "Brutus". Let's say Brutus possesses something, perhaps a dog. In English, we indicate this by sticking an apostrophe at the end of the word "Brutus". i.e. "Brutus' dog". Latin, having a lack of all kinds of punctuation, instead of using an apostrophe, changes the ending of the word "Brutus" to mean exactly the same thing. So, in Latin, we say "Bruti canis", and say that Bruti is in the genitive case. Latin has five major cases and two minor ones. The vocative is one of the minor ones which is used for directly addressing people. So, when Caesar is dying, he speaks to Brutus (or Shakespeare would have us believe), he says "et tu, Brute", as he is addressing Brutus directly, and using the vocative case.

This is a theological question, not a grammatical one. The Romans certainly talked about their gods in the plural as a group, and in the singular when need be. Generally Christians talk about the trinity in the singular. An interesting note (to me at least), is that while Christians use the vocative case for addressing God frequently, the Romans never did, it just wasn't the way they interacted with their gods.

Sounds like a lot of fun. While it is really cold outside of the plane at altitude, it doesn't get that cold in the cargo bays. Depending on the plane there are often two cargo areas, one heated and the other not so heated. Animals and other cold sensitive things are put in the heated one. The non heated cargo area gets much colder, but still above freezing. For liquids and things that might spill, I'd be more worried about the lower air pressure (which is true for any part of the airplane) than the temperature.

I read a great quote by some annoyingly fit workout guy who said "Mood follows action", meaning that you shouldn't wait until you are in the mood to exercise, but once you start you will become in the mood. Don't know if it is inspiring enough to work for me.