What Latin course(s) would you choose for the following requirements...

[Hedgehog]

(I've posted this on the K-12 board but am repeating just in case you seasoned homeschoolers don't often go there!)

 

1) Grammar/vocab intensive

2) Classical pronounciation

3) suitable for Latin study right the way through Grade 12

4) non-teacher intensive

5) course CD preferred in the early stages

 

???

 

I know I've asked this kind of question before, and I've received the following recommendations: Latin for Children, Lively Latin and Galore Park Latin, but I'm not sure that any of those go through to Grade 12. My oldest dd loves languages, learns quickly with no difficulty and I can see her wanting to continue with Latin and French and maybe do other languages right through her schooling.

 

I don't mind switching from one program to another provided they follow on reasonably well. I don't have any Latin knowledge myself and not a lot of English Grammar although that's coming along as I teach the dc!

 

Thanks for helping - I think I am getting to grips with this slowly!

[forty-two]

Galore Park gets you to the point of reading Latin lit. Latin for Children leads into Latin Alive, which I believe is also a complete grammar course. But in either case you'd need to then find a reader and/or Latin lit anthologies (or complete Latin works).

 

If you don't want to have to search out your own readers, though, I'd seriously think about Henle. Any CDs would probably have ecclesiastical pronunciation, but it has the most complete set of readers/lit anthologies as part of the main series that I know of (Henle 2 is Caeser, 3 is Cicero, 4 is Virgil).

[forty-two]

If your big thing is one series through 12th, bear in mind that most series teach the grammar, often have a transitional reader, and then they turn you loose to read whatever Latin authors you or your school deem worthy. Not that searching out Latin readers is all that hard or anything. But for all-in-oneness, Henle sticks with what used to be the standard Latin author progression, and so goes farther than other series.

[Hedgehog]

Thanks.. I didn't realise that.

 

Do you know whether Galore Park has what you call a transitional reader? (Sorry, I am very ignorant of how this all works, and the websites don't always make sense to me.)

 

Can you do Henle without the CDs? What about Wheelock's? I know some people use it but I'm not at all clear about how it would fit in with any of the curricula I mentioned in the first post. - Reading Virgil etc. does sound good though and my dd is also keen.

[forty-two]

Galore Park has a reader, but it's unclear to me where exactly it falls in the sequence of things (it's for pre-GCSE prep, which is the exam their series is geared for, so it is toward the end of the series, at least - but not sure whether it is designed to help wean students off of easy Latin and get them ready for the straight-up classics, which is the point of a transitional reader; here are some examples, any of which you could use once you had learned all the grammar).

 

You certainly don't *need* CDs to do Henle - it's just to help with pronunciations and such; also it is an easy way to practice speaking/listening to Latin (which really speeds the Latin learning), but there are plenty of resources - many free - for that.

 

Wheelock's is a college text that people sometimes use in high school. Veritas Press (a Christian classical company), recommends a sequence of Latin for Children in 3rd-5th (using Cambridge Latin unit 1 as a reader) followed by Wheelock's in 6-8, and Latin authors in high school. It's an ambitious progression - a lot of people find you have to slow down quite a bit with younger students. Wheelock's does have a lot of helps - it has an accompanying workbook, a reader, a transitional reader, available audio, plus a related grammar help. There's a fair bit of info on the boards about it - here's a good thread.