Latin for Children - How do you present the lessons?

[Ginevra]

I am excited to try Latin with ds9 and just got my Latin for Children program. But, honestly, I'm not sure how to set up the lessons. Especially in the early part, where you have to learn the pronunciation and understand endings. Ds is not language-intuitive (he is a math guy) and I'm worried about making a big mess of trying to introduce the program. Add to that the classical vs. ecclesiastical pronunciation. Personally, I would prefer ecclessiastical; it makes more sense, it's easier to see the relationships to words we use. I was not taught Latin specifically, but what small Latin I picked up was always given the ecclesiastic pronunciation; I didn't even know there was a variation. But on the DVD's, the "teacher" uses classical. Again, I'm concerned that ds will be confused.

 

So, how do you set up your lessons? And how do you spread out, or get through that beginning foundation? And how do you cope with the pronunciation issue? :bigear:

[elegantlion]

I have no Latin background and having the DVD and CD was necessary for me in the pronunciation. We did the classical pronunciation. I had a workbook for myself and this was how we did the lessons.

 

Day 1 - watch the DVD and review the words orally.

Day 2 - review the vocabulary, sometimes we used the CD. If I felt I had the pronunciation down I wouldn't use it. If he was having trouble I would review the words one at a time. We would do the grammar page.

Day 3 - review vocabulary again, do worksheet page.

Day 4 - review vocabulary, quiz page.

 

My son is mildly dyslexic and we did some of the work orally. Latin really helped him being able to sound out words.

 

We spent a lot of the week playing with the words and reviewing them not during school time.

 

I found the review chapters most helpful and later in the book we spent two weeks on the review chapters to make sure he had the work down.

 

We also used some of the free downloads from the CAP website, and the Latin flash game was fun for both of us.

 

ETA: Even though we used classical pronunciation I found the page in the front of the book helpful to introduce some of the ecc. pronunciation to him just to show the difference.

[MomOfOneFunOne]

Day 1

We read the maxim, vocab and the lesson first and underline things we think are important.

 

We watch the DVD and hope like mad that there's a How the West was Unus episode! We underline anything we think he was trying to emphasize. Really, it's short and to the point so there isn't a lot of that.

 

We practice and do the worksheet in the text.

 

Days 2, 3, 4

We practice, study and complete an activity page.

 

Day 5

We review and complet the quiz and do a page or two from the history reader.

 

We do other latin as well but we dont' mix them or try to do them at the same time as others sometimes do. We aren't that clever!

 

I forgot to add: it doesn't really matter about pronunciation with LfC. They do classical throughout. They seem to try to do ecclesiastical from time-to-time but they so miss the mark that you really couldn't call it anything like ecclesiastical. It doesn't bother us, eventhough we prefer ecclesiastical.

Edited June 7, 2009 by MomOfOneFunOne

[Ginevra]

Paula, thank you for that. I bought LfC on your recommendation primarily, because my son is somewhat dyslexic, too.