Latin Prep for an LA-strong 9yo?

[blondeviolin]

My 9yo has finished GSWL. She got a bit confused with genitive case, but that resolved after practice. That was the ONLY issue she had with GSWL. LA stuff comes easily to her.

 

I have read it gets difficult quickly... Would it be too much to have her do Latin Prep for 4th grade? Obviously if it's rough, we will move slowly or pause or whatever. Has anyone done it with a 9yo?

[crazyforlatin]

I've done another book (Lukeion's choice, not mine) with a kid that age and it was fine, but I have a kid that is very language-oriented, so reading, foreign languages, grammar are relatively easy for her, which means we tend to have to use books that are more geared towards higher grades to provide any sort of challenge.

 

I think Laura Corin mentioned that it's usually used by kids a bit older than 9, and I looked at it a while back when I had to decide between Henle and Latin Prep. I chose the former for reasons that didn't really have anything to do with Latin Prep. After GSWL we used Henle at a slower pace for a couple of years, and the transition was easy, so I think GSWL provides a good intro to almost any serious Latin textbook.

 

I say you give a try at a slower pace. Some kids are ready for logic work while in the grammar stage.

[Laura Corin]

You are in luck: Latin Prep 1 has two work books to go along with it, whereas the later books don't.  I would recommend doing the first half of LP1 with workbook 1 with your 9yo, then the second half with workbook 2 when she's ten.  I wouldn't try to do the whole text book in one year.  

 

Make sure that the grammar is really, really strong as you go through ( the text book won't say 'learn this' but it assumes that everything is learned as you go along).  The author recommended learning the conjugations etc. to '3am proficiency', so that someone could wake you up at 3 and demand that you regurgitate them, and you could do it unthinkingly.

 

L