When we started homeschooling in 1991 it was to "save" my little boys from a public school that was crushing their love of learning. I thought, "OK, I can endure homeschooling for a couple of years until we can find a great school for them to attend. One where they know what they're doing." HAhaha! *that* never happened, but what did happen is that I fell in love with the freedom of homeschooling. We got addicted to learning in our own way, and in our own time. As soon as I gave up the idea of trying to keep up with the public school Joneses, so to speak--I developed a passion for it. Homeschooling didn't take over our lives, it gave us a life!

Hello Everyone, I just found out about this tragedy a few days ago and have been thinking about everyone a lot. My heart goes out to all the teachers and families whose lives are topsy-turvy right now. And suddenly I had a thought, a way that I could easily help: I manage The Harvey Center, which is an association of tutors. We are very small this year, and so aren't using a lot of our online meeting account's potential. It would thrill me to be able to help with that part by providing free hosting of your class for the rest of this school year. I realize that most of you teachers are getting your former Landry classes set up again at places like Big River. But if any of you former LA teachers need a free platform from which to teach this semester and for some reason don't want to join up with one of the new groups, I will be glad to talk to you about using our Wiziq account free for the remainder of the year. It just so happens that I have many tracks available and it's all paid for. This program works very much like GotoMeeting or Adobe Connect; it has an interactive white board, chat, microphone, and video. I'm hoping to add lots of courses in the summer and the fall, so I'll be needing the conferencing power back at that point. But then you could consider becoming formally associated with us! We are independent tutors, who work together and support each other--we're not employees. Just send me a private message telling me what class you were teaching and how many students you have. It would be easy for me to set you up, and I could even provide a webpage with all of your information. :)

I just wanted to give some encouragement to those of you with a dyslexic child. My middle son was dyslexic, and was unable to read until he was about 9yo, and after this it was still very hard to get him to read books. Of course, at his beginning reading level they were too cutesy, and so he couldn't be interested. But I worried lots, thinking that he must need lots of easy *practice!* I found things like the Bob books and got him to read those--but finally I just laid off, thinking that he might get better in time. I still worried that I wasn't getting him to develop his reading skills! Then, when he got to be about 11 or 12 he discovered the Narnia books and read every one of them as quickly as possible. A bit later (about age 12 or 13) we gave him the Lord of the Rings, and he devoured them! I was flabbergasted, because I thought that he would have needed lots more practice in order to read at that level. During the homeschooling years he was never the avid reader that his older brother was. But then, when he was done with homeschooling he began reading books by Jane Austen, Dostoevsky, etc.--just because he wanted to! So, even though I didn't succeed in getting him to read much when he was young, he still took off with it in his own time. This surprised me greatly--because I just figured he was never going to be much of a reader. Interestingly, my brother (who is just like my middle son) was force-fed reading in 1st and 2nd grade in every way imaginable. It was a huge ordeal to try to get him to read. And I believe it was because of the way they tried to force him to read at the same level as others, at too young an age, that he always hated reading. My brother has never voluntarily read a book for fun, or a work of literature! So it seems that sometimes they just need to develop this skill in their own time! My theory is that my son loves reading now because his associations with reading weren't too negative. Rather than being forced to read a lot too early, instead he just saw the rest of us enjoying books (and he had heard them read aloud) so when he was older he picked up books cause he wanted to. But my brother (and some other relatives who were force fed reading too young) have very negative associations with books. Just my theory!!! :)

I've been amazed at how similar our experience has been to many of the posters here! I can almost say simply "ditto to everything Miss Marple said. Especially the first two paragraphs below. The only thing one of my sons complained about in college was the "group projects" because he seemed to end up having to do most of the work, since the others weren't very diligent at all. I have also noticed lately that there are so many college kids who have been kept totally busy in the school system (or in academics as homeschoolers) and never had any work experience, or never had to take responsibility for either laundry or cooking! This is one area that our boys found to be quite a benefit to them when they were in college, because the skills learned in working for spending money and taking care of themselves gave them great advantages over those who had done nothing but study or be in school through grade 12.

Of course there are! ;) I was just giving those as three great examples. By the way, here's some help for those who don't understand the term "inflected." The term "inflection" means ending--or--the process of changing the spelling of the word to indicate its use in a sentence. Latin inflections tell us most of what we need to know about the syntax of a sentence. In English, word order determines the syntax for the most part. In English when we read: "The poet gives the girl a rose," the word order gives us the clues we need to figure out who is giving what to whom. Because of this word order we assume that poet is the subject, girl is the indirect object, and rose is the direct object. If we change the order of the words: "a rose poet girl gives" we cannot understand it. And, if we arrange it this way: "the girl gives the poet a rose" it has a whole new meaning. Now lets look at the the same sentence in Latin: "poeta puellae rosam dat." Regardless of word order, it means: “The poet gives the girl a rose,†The inflections show us the syntax, with only one ambiguity: the -ae ending could be seen as genitive here, but that wouldn't make as much sense. An "inflected language" is a language in which the syntax of a sentence is determined more by inflections(endings on words) than by word order.

True this! But only a few modern languages are inflected, and 'they' say that it is only inflected languages such as Latin, Greek and Russian which give the most help understanding the underlying grammar. And also, Latin really does give you great power over English vocabulary and the lingo of law and science--among many other bonuses. I *love* learning modern languages and feel that if a student learns Spanish or some other modern language it will be a wonderful thing. But the benefit will only come if they persevere further than two years, since a student needs to continue on with a language study, and even be immersed in it, in order to actually speak to natives. If a person studies only two years of Latin, they still come away with many long term benefits because of those other factors....After only two years of Spanish, down the road, the student only remembers how to say hello and goodbye, and ask for more water. So if a student takes only two years of language Latin would definitely be preferable. If the student is motivated to continue on with their modern language and do the hard work of developing it to speak it, then that would be excellent! ;'> Now, of course, ideally a student should study several years of a classical language AND learn a modern language, mostly be immersion. And even though I'm a Latin teacher (so now you know my bias!)--I don't fault any student who just really wants to study another language. Any language study has its own great benefits!

I studied Latin in the university back in the 1990s, but I still vividly remember it did for me: The best way I can describe it is that it gave me a 3 dimensional understanding of grammar. You see, grammar is a very abstract concept. (This is why most students cannot really begin to understand grammar until they are about 10yo or older. In the early grades they just memorize facts and grammar definitions.) You're analyzing the underlying structure of language and how it works. So when you learn how a very different system works (Latin is an inflected language while English is not.) it is like getting a different perspective on language and its syntax. I agree with all of the above comments! And especially these two points: mom2att: I did not, however, drop English Grammar study in favor of Latin study. We did both. Bluegoat: By the time most students have a higher level of proficiency in Latin, I'd expect them to be dropping English grammar as a subject anyway. Yes and yes!

Hi Laney, I just saw this discussion and thought that perhaps my free sample tutorials for Latina Ponti could be helpful... Here is the website. And please know that these are not just a teaser for you; you should be able to glean enough knowledge from these to help you understand the first two years of elementary Latin--or more! In the Ch 1 and Ch 5 tutorials you will find lots of explanation on the way Latin works in general. I have been teaching an overview summer course for parents since about 2001, and have had SO many moms tell me that they were finally able to understand Latin, even after just the first two sessions. Here is a sample of the online version of the "Mom's Latin" (slide over to 10 minutes in to start the Latin content). Wishing you great success with the Latin!

Fwiw, the -m is found in many more places than just on "sum." You can explain to your students that the alternative -m ending is going to be found on the verbs whenever they are in the subjunctive mood, and also in the Imperfect tense, indicative. In later grammar the -m is used for the 1st person singular much more than the -o is! :)

Hi there, I heard that there were some questions about our Latin program at the Harvey Center. So I thought that I'd try to answer them, and I should let you know we have an Open House coming up soon, so you could ask any other questions you have then. All 3 of us Latin tutors plan to be there. Skimomma--Yes, I believe that someone could easily switch to our Latin III course after two years of Lukeion - assuming that they finish most of the 40 chapters of Wheelock's in that two year time. I studied Wheelock's with Dale Grote at UNCC, way back in the 90s and really love this text; for many years I taught using Wheelock's before switching to LNM. We are really enjoying using the Latin for the New Millennium textbooks now. I like the way they have many easy practice exercises to prepare the student for translating, and the students love the beautiful illustrations and the very interesting discussions of Roman history. The books are so engaging! OnMyOwn, about studying three years of Latin on your own..... After the first year I think that it would get very tough for a student to master the material without a tutor. After you get past the elementary grammar concepts and begin learning the subjunctive mood and reading unadapted Latin, you need lots of help! Our Latin IV is a course in reading Vergil, and it does prepare a student for taking the AP exam; but for many reasons we have decided not to offer any "official AP courses." Dr. Grote could best answer your questions about this, and he plans to be at our online open house. :)

Yes! That's exactly why most of us do it that way here at the Harvey Center. We start out by showing our video, and also that of the students if they would like to, and then switch to no video to "save the bandwith" for those who have slow internet connections. :)

We do! :) Some of the time. Here is a link to samples of our online classes. Note that Angelina's regularly show her. To save bandwith, and depending on what sort of class it is, the tutor sometimes doesn't activate the video. But we provide opportunities for all of the students to come to "Online Socials" where they can see each other and the tutors.

Which is just what you have to do with a textbook--but that doesn't make it correct. GGardner is right on this one ;-) of course! No one is criticizing you, just the text. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Latin_irregular_verbs

You're welcome, of course! I'll be happy to answer any questions at all about Latin curriculum, etc..... having used almost everything out there over the past 20 years. But *do* help her to finish the Latin--it is so rewarding in the long run! There are many wonderful Latin tutors out there. I highly recommend the online tutors at Scholars and Compass (in addition to ours :') Happy hunting! :)

Yes, Debbie! I'm glad you mentioned this about the TMs -- they are very well done! So many nice extras in them. And you are so right, even if a student has studied something such as First Form or Lively Latin, they will still be learning lots of new material in LNM I. There are a few concepts in there that many texts don't cover until Latin II, and there is a lot of conversational Latin you won't find anywhere else. Not to mention all of the new vocabulary that they are bound to find.