Henle Latin vs. Latin Alive

[*AM*]

My two sons  {ages 11 and 13}  and I  just finished LFC A and wanted to move on.

My oldest will be beginning high school and I know that LFC B is only a half credit course and was thinking of switching to either Henle or Latin Alive.

We really loved LFC A and especially the DVDs which made it much more easily understood as I have no prior Latin background.

I have heard that if you use Henle you can nicely combine Visual Latin with it too.

 

Would love to hear what everyone thinks.

 

Many thanks :)

 

[AFwife Claire]

I just finished teaching 2 years of Latin 1, first with Henle, then with Latin Alive.  I greatly preferred Henle, but only because it enabled me to effectively teach it without having a great deal of background in Latin--only Latina Christiana 1 and 2 with my own kids.  The scope and sequence drives me crazy (he introduces all 5 noun declensions, plus a very few selected verbs, and then eventually he gets around to how you conjugate.  I wish he was more balanced.)  But there are *tons* of exercises, so if you check your work, you can know that you are in fact doing everything correctly. 

 

With Latin Alive, I did like the sequence of how they introduced things better, and I also liked all the interesting tidbits of Roman history and culture they have.  Evenutally we stopped translating the readings, though, because they got pretty complicated, and a huge majority of the words would be words you had ever seen before and had to look up in a little section after the reading, as opposed to vocab you had learned.  Also, there were quite a few times they used a word that had never been given as a vocab word or anything.  Usually they were words I knew from Henle or other previous study, but still, it was weird.  Maybe those were just words from LFC that they assume you know?  They weren't in the glossary at the end of the book, either, which could be frustrating for kids. 

 

My biggest complaint with Latin Alive, however, was that there simply isn't enough practice.  There are also not anywhere enough examples either.  Now we weren't using the DVDs, so maybe they are chock-full of helpful examples, but the teacher's guide doesn't give any more examples or explanations than the student text does, and it's just not enough.  I ended up making extra practice sheets for my students to do during the week, and we used the exercises in the book during class time to explain the concepts.  That was all fine and dandy until we got to maybe lesson 19 or 20, when I started being a lot less confidant in some of the concepts.  Then I would try to make up practice sheets, but I wasn't sure I was using the words (cases, whatever) correctly, and I spent a lot of time in Henle and Wheelock's, trying to figure things out.  It took me forever, and was a huge stressor in an otherwise very busy year (I also teach AP biology).  But like I said, maybe the DVDs are fantastic, and we should have used those.  I don't know.  I do know that it was hard for someone who doesn't already thoroughly know Latin to teach from Latin Alive with any degree of certainty, and I know I could never do Latin 2 with it! 

[chiguirre]

I agree with Claire about Latin Alive. Trinqueta has used it in her online Latin 2 class at Landry this year and it is not very user friendly. There never seem to be enough examples and the charts in the back are not as useful as Jenney's Latin which we used last year. I'm glad next year they switch to Wheelock's and 38 Fabulae.

[Laurel-in-CA]

Now I don't feel so badly. We crashed and burned about 1/2 way thru LA 2 this year (we'd done LFC A-C and LA 1). Now we're doing Jenney's First Year Latin for the rest of a year as review and to keep ourselves in practice. Not sure about next year, which will be dd's last year planned for latin as I've told her she can do Spanish @ CC for a modern foreign language.

 

[Paula in MS]

For those of you who have used Latin Alive, do you think it is helpful to follow up with Henle as a method of reviewing after Latin Alive 1?  I feel exactly the same about Latin Alive.  My daughter is taking it in an online setting, but there is almost no homework because of the very few exercises in each chapter.  For those of us that know little Latin, it is hard to help them study the chapters besides flashcards.  I would love a set of extra worksheets or at least some structured method to study the text.

[happypamama]

I looked at both last year at a convention, and tbh, I hated the look of Henle.  The short, fat book, the tiny print. . . I knew it would be an instant turn-off for my daughter, so I decided I didn't care if it was the absolute best Latin program out there because it just wasn't going to work for us.  In contrast, Latin Alive is clean and tidy and just nice to use, in DD's and my opinions.  So ymmv.  (We aren't very far into LA1, so I can't comment on how much review and all it has; most of what we've seen thus far has been review because this is our third Latin program.)

[chiguirre]

For those of you who have used Latin Alive, do you think it is helpful to follow up with Henle as a method of reviewing after Latin Alive 1?

If you have Henle on hand, go for it. If not, Wheelock's has online exercises that autocorrect here:

 

http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/latin/wheelock/index.htm

 

Lots of teacher helps here:

 

http://wheelockslatin.com/wheelocksteacherguide.html

 

You can pick up a copy of Wheelock's sixth edition for a penny plus shipping on amazon.