Minimus?

[M.Z.]

Can you give me some information on Minimus? Ds6 is finishing Elementary Latin, and I'm considering Minimus Secundus next. It looks like a lot of the vocabulary from level 1 of Minimus is the same as EL. Ds also did a highly condensed run-through of FLL 1/2 this year, so he has a basic grammar understanding. His reading level is early 7th grade. Would Minimus Secundus be a good follow-up to EL? I know some of you don't care for Secundus. Some details would be nice, since I can't find online samples. Would something like Latin for Children be better? I do think he'd love the comic-style approach of Minimus.

 

Also, I'm wondering if 1st level Minimus would be a good replacement for both FLL and EL for my dd4 next year. (She'll be 5 then and already reads on a 4th-grade level.) I wasn't thrilled with FLL, and Minimus looks like it gives some basic grammar. Dd is finishing up Latin's Not So Tough level 1 (mostly for handwriting practice), but she enjoys listening to the EL audio CD with her brother and knows a lot of the vocab.

 

I always enjoy the insights on this board. Thanks in advance for your help.

[crazyforlatin]

I had the same problem deciding what text to use. My daughter and I loved Getting Started with Latin by William Linney. The book is divided into daily lessons with 10 practice sentences per lesson (student will translate more than 1000 sentences by the end of the book). It's so manageable that we would frequently do 2 lessons per day. We started when she was 4 and finished in 4 months. I purchased Prima Latina and Minimus but found the former lacking in practice and the latter lacking in practice and order (not all words are translated). However, now that we are working on Henle Year 1, we're using Minimus for fun, but I don't think it's the best book to study Latin seriously. Getting Started with Latin does teach the child/adult Latin grammar, but it's not comprehensive because as the title suggests, it's getting the student interested. My daughter is almost 5 and seems to enjoy Henle, which provides a lot of practice questions.

 

I haven't heard of EL, and I was considering FLL. Could you tell me why you didn't like FLL? Were you planning to have your son study Latin grammar as a substitute for English grammar?

[M.Z.]

Thanks, I'll look into Getting Started with Latin. In general our Latin grammar would complement rather than replace English grammar. I just wondered if Minimus might ease my daughter into both. EL doesn't really cover grammar. It's more of a vocabulary builder.

 

FLL is a fine book. The consensus on this board seems to be that it is just too incremental an approach for accelerated/gifted students. The first 50 lessons or so focus on nouns, for example. I condensed these into 2 lessons for my son. We did memorize two or three of the suggested poems, but in general, I chose my own poems from more classic authors. Also, I found it more natural to incorporate narration with some of our science, history, and literature, so we skipped all the narration lessons too. Most of these quibbles are just personal preference. The actual grammar instruction is fine. We just glossed over so much of the book that it probably wasn't the best fit for us. Hope that helped.

[crazyforlatin]

Thanks for your FLL opinion. And, no, Minimus will not ease anyone into Latin or English grammar. I was disappointed with Minimus until now, after learning the basics of Latin grammar. Minimus seems to be for a child who has been learning Latin and understands simple Latin grammar. It is fun once this happens. I also bought Latina Christiana (next level after Prima Latina), but after finishing Getting Started with Latin, I felt it would be better to move straight to Henle.

 

Also, the author of Getting Started with Latin has a website where he has posted lectures and pronunciations.

[Jen in PA]

My DD actually learned a ton of grammar from Minimus. She could look at a sentence full of new vocabulary and instantly pick out the parts of speech (right down to telling me the function of the noun) even when she had no clue what the words meant.

[Saille]

I agree with crazyforlatin. Full disclosure: I don't have the TM. I've seen it at a friend's house, and wish I did, but it still didn't look to me like it taught Latin grammar in any kind of structured way. You might have seen my post earlier this week asking about the four principle parts of each verb used in Minimus...we use Lively Latin, and that's how they study them within that program, so I'm trying to have consistency among our flashcards, at least.

 

That said, we do Minimus for fun in the summer, and my kids do love it. They love Rosetta Stone too, but you can see how kids would have trouble naming the concepts they were applying if they learned Latin only through immersion. Minimus has the same basic problem.