Well, I can answer this from my own experience so far with my two oldest children. First, a little background. My oldest daughter was homeschooled primarily from 4th through 9th grade (with a jump start homeschooling for K and 1st grade.) And then, as a child whose greatest pleasure in life is arguing, she went to public highschool. During those homeschooling years, we tried several writing programs, including Writing Strands and others that escape my memory. However, I can say with certainty that none of them were classical and several of them WERE creative. I had not yet discovered the classical method at that time. When she entered public school in 10th grade, their primary emphasis was on essay writing and preparing the students for the SAT Writing portion. But again, the method was not classical. My oldest is now a college sophomore. I can say with pride that she is a wonderful writer! But I will say with excruciating honesty that she was NOT a wonderful writer until just this past year. Oh, she began to pull things together and figure them out during her senior year of highschool, and she scored well enough on that stupid SAT writing test, but she really blossomed as a writer in just the past six months. Before this point, she hated writing. Putting essays together and coming up with ideas was like pulling teeth for her. She wants to be an archaeologist, but the other day I was shocked to hear her list journalism as an alternate career path. My middle is now a highschool sophomore. He is now and always has been homeschooled. I discovered the classical method at the beginning of his 5th grade year when he began a co-op Classical Writing Homer class. He has had classical writing classes for five years now. He is already a wonderful writer. Is it his favorite thing to do? No way. Was he a wonderful writer from the beginning of the process? No way. There definitely needed to be some cognitive development along the way for him. But just in the past year or two he's begun to pull together all that he has learned, and now he can really put together a wonderful, well-structured, well-thought out essay. I'm incredibly pleased. And I think I can say that there is no comparison between what he has been able to do as a highschool freshman and what my daughter could do at the same age. Will they end up at the same place? Yes, I think so. Oh, honestly, I don't know. It's possible my son will be able to write circles around my daughter when he is an adult - but I hope not - I hope they will be on an even terrain in that regard. But I can say one thing for sure in regards to these two children: the path in getting there has been much much easier with my classically-trained son. I hope this helps just a little. There's no question that this can't be applied to all children. If I've learned one thing at all on this homeschooling path, it is that there is no right answer for all children. Just as each one is unique and different, there is a unique educational answer for each child. Just as public school in highschool was the right answer for my oldest, homeschooling in high school is the right answer for my middle. I am gradually solving the puzzle for each child, and can only share my experiences! I do know one thing - I am sold on the classical method, and my youngest has no choice in how she is learning to write!

I am finishing up Vol. II this year with my 6th grade daughter and we both loved it! I didn't think the text was dry at all. I thought it was well-written, AND interesting! Now, was it written in a fun and quirky manner? No! But does all school need to be that way? I don't think so. Key components for me: Again, well-written and interesting. No bias in the writing, except definitely focusing primarily on American History, which is obvious from the title. GREAT additional resources for reinforcement in the Teacher's Guide and Student Activity Book in the form of additional worksheets, further study questions, topics for further study (could be used for projects, essays, whatever, and all VERY interesting), and a suggested reading list. This reading list in particular was what I used to enhance our study further from the textbook. By supplementing the text with additional reading from great historical literature (think Sonlight), we had a great history study this year. Wonderful program!

Hi, Hot Lava! Any student finishing WT 2 is more than ready to begin Homer, regardless of age! WT 2 over-prepares them to begin Homer, honestly. And doing any part of Aesop would be redundant. Go ahead and start Homer...the first four or five months will be a wonderful breeze. Enjoy,

Not by me! I LOVE their early books...particulary Book 2....WONDERFUL for early Latin students (think Grade 2 in particular.) It's only the levels after that that I don't care for. But I'm totally sold on their early books - in fact, used both Books 1 AND 2 for both of my younger children, and would have used them for my oldest if I had known about them!

In making your decision, I'd say gauge how much time and Latin knowledge YOU have yourself. If you don't have a ton of time and/or are not too comfortable with teaching Latin, I'd go with GLA. It's such a great foundational program, and written so well - such clear explanations. Then once done with that, it moves extremely well into Latin Prep. The one program flows into the other beautifully - grammar-wise, vocabulary-wise, everything. It's just a great progression. I like Latin Prep for 7th grade and above, myself, and GLA for 5th and 6th graders. That's exactly the progression we use in our co-op and it works beautifully. The students fly through Latin Prep once they get such an excellent foundation from GLA.

OH yes, vocabulary cards! Yes, they absolutely did make their own vocabulary cards, and part of their homework was to review them every day. Important stuff!

We didn't do the pronunciation CD because I could pronounce it for them. But they definitely used a pronunciation CD during the week from time to time. (the "official" pronunciation CD wasn't out when I began using this, so I made my own). Were I starting anew with Latin, yes, I might use the CD in classtime....or even better, I would probably learn the words myself at home with the CD, and then model the words for the students in class myself. Better teaching that way, I think. Uh oh....what was the other question? I'll check, and then repost....

I've used Our Mother Tongue too; I liked it, but I didn't find my children had good retention with it. I still love Growing With Grammar. They JUST came out with Grade 7 last week! I'll be sticking with that one as long as they keep coming out with new grade levels one year ahead of my daughter. I also used Easy Grammar - there's much I loved about that program, but the lack of sentence diagramming led me to search out something else.

I like GLA for 5th grade and above, but it has also been used successfully with 4th graders, and even bright 3rd graders. Keeping in mind with my age recommendations that I have taught it primarily in a co-op setting! I would imagine with one-on-one teaching that it would work quite well with 4th graders. Volume 1 may be quite successful with 3rd graders in one-on-one settings as well. Below that, no, I wouldn't recommend it. But yes - perhaps starting in on the vocabulary would be a good idea. I have to clarify my previous post when I was complaining about ablative macrons in a conjugation of amo in another curriculum...uh oh, I really was tired last night! Yes, I really do know my Latin, I promise you! And I obviously was very tired...I was confusing my two prominent macron complaints together and not even realizing it. Of course the macron issue with the amo conjugation was in the first person singular ending. There was another macron issue throughout the book with ablative singular endings - which of course SHOULD have macrons, I firmly believe, to distinguish them from nominative singular endings. In that curriculum sometimes the macrons were present; sometimes they were not. Thanks for listening!! :blushing:

Yes, I have used GLA in my co-op classes for the past five years. It works well. Two weeks per chapter, approximately. Introduce the Grammar Lesson the first week, and do some of the concepts together. For example, if you are learning the imperfect tense, have the students conjugate verbs from the vocab list in the imperfect tense. (I will admit I make up a lot of my own material from the vocabulary list...but if you are learning as you go along, the grammar lessons are so easy, you may even feel comfortable doing this yourself.) Then I have the parents correct a few of the worksheets with the children during the week, but leave ONE for us to correct in class together the following week. We'll correct, as an example, Translation Worksheet 1 together. This will give us plenty of sentences for practice in class together. It also tells me how the students are doing with the material - what they need more practice on. We practice more with the concepts in class, using the vocabulary words again. With extra class time we play vocabulary review games, and as they get more adept in their translating skills, we make up sentences for each other to translate. Hope this helps! It really works beautifully in a co-op setting.

Oh dear, I'm going to bed now! :D Glad I could help, though!

Me me, pick me! I, as you know, am also a raving fan of GLA! And I am familiar with Latin Road and Latin in the Christian Trivium. I taught LCT in my co-op class last year for four months before we tossed it out for Latin Prep. (These were my students who had already finished Volumes 1 and 2 of GLA and were ready to move up.) I was very frustrated with LCT. I found the grammar explanations in the books unclear, and my biggest frustration with the program was perhaps something that others would consider minor - extremely inconsistent macron usage throughout the books. For example, a conjugation of the verb "amo" on page 24 would not contain a macron on the singular ablative ending, while the same conjugation in the Appendix of the same book WOULD have a macron (correctly) on the same ending! I actually talked with the author about this, and her response was that the Romans were actually very lax with their macron usage, and she didn't want the students to use them as crutches. Now, I realize that there are two schools of thought regarding macron use: I guess I fall into the second one, which regards macrons as helps rather than crutches. Not only that, but if one is going to spend an entire section of the book teaching the student that a vowel with a macron is pronounced differently than a vowel without a macron, I think it would be appropriate to take more care where one places macrons later on. Not just that, but I also found the Teacher's Guide to be less than helpful. I really set out to like the curriculum. I met the author; she was very sweet and helpful, and extremely knowledgeable about Latin. I felt very badly that I did not like the program. My experience with Latin Road is more ancient - my oldest daughter used it in a co-op class about seven years ago. I remember that this book teaches primarily through the "notebooking" method (as does LCT), but I do not remember much about the actual Latin grammar or how it is taught, other than I was not thrilled with it. In other words, my primary concern at the time was that my daughter did NOT learn well by copying every single word of the book down into a notebook. It was a big source of frustration for us. Oh dear, I hope this helps, and I did not come across as complaining! My apologies in advance if I did!

Well, my opinion here is already known, so I hesitated responding - but then again I couldn't resist throwing a thought out. If it doesn't work for you, please feel free to disregard! It's already known that I love GLA! I did look briefly at LFC a couple of years ago, so am familiar with that as well. The reason I decided to post was that you mentioned that your son hasn't mastered the material. One of the reasons that I LOVE GLA is for the very fact that it IS so thorough, and the children do master the material so well, and then go on to a higher level curriculum with such a solid foundation in Latin. By the beginning of Volume 2, the students are manipulating Latin grammar into complex sentences, even though they never leave the 1st declension or the 1st conjugation. I think that's why I adore this curriculum so much. Two less details for them to think about (which declension? which conjugation?) and removing that from the equation frees them up to do so much more with their grammar at this level. The students learn many different prepositions, direct and indirect objects, genitive case, ablative of means, predicate nominative and adjectives, three different verb tenses, etc. All throughout Volume 2 the students are really challenged with their sentence translations. In fact, with a little review and after learning the grammar in Volume 1, you may very well even be able to START in Volume 2. I wonder if you might reconsider looking at GLA again, only because you say your child needs mastery, and think about doing both volumes in one year? Then you certainly could easily move into something like Latin Prep (which I have found to be an excellent next step from GLA, and I even rewrote all the case orders in the book!!) or even Wheelocks after that. Just a thought. I realize why you might look at GLA as a step back, but again, if the material is presented differently from his previous curriculum....perhaps mastery is what you want to achieve at this point.

Oh my goodness, SO friendly! I think that's one of the program's strengths. Anyone who doesn't know a stitch of Latin can easily pick up the program and guide their children through the book as if they were experts. As one of the reviewers said, it's like having your OWN Latin expert on hand to help you out! For those of you who have older children, say - 5th grade and above -, these children could easily go through the program on their own, with you on hand to answer questions from the Teacher's Notes if needed.

Hi there, I have taught GLA in my co-op classes for five years now. So you can be certain that this is not a newly-written program! Newly-published, yes, but the author took her time getting it out onto the market. I can say with certainty for all of you that there are NO errors in this program! I am very very familiar with it. We found just a few errors while teaching the program before it was published, and Katharine took care of them right away. She's very very thorough and spent even more hours going through it again and again before publishing it. And I am not the only one who has been using it. Another co-op has been using it as well, and a local Christian school. There may be others that I am not aware of who have been testing it for her too. Hope this answers your question! If you have any more, please feel free to ask away! Blessings,