MCT progression and Latin studies

[Sarah0000]

How long do you wait between levels of MCT or do you just move on ahead? What if you are doing Latin as well?

My (accelerated) rising first grader finished most of MCT Island and is now doing the Practice book. I was thinking of having him only do one sentence once or twice a week and so stretching it over the next one to two years. We recently started Song School Latin 1. I have no idea what my long term goals are with Latin but he really wanted to learn it after doing MCT Building Language, and since he loves SSL we'll probably continue with SSL2. So that would potentially put him starting the next level of MCT and a grammar Latin program in third. 

That seems like too much in the third grade year? Would it be better to finish the Island practice book over one year (first grade) then do the second level of MCT in second grade with SSL2, so third grade would be the grammar Latin program and just the MCT practice book?

I guess I'm wondering how people are balancing grammar and Latin in the early years. 

[Clemsondana]

We have always just moved on to the next level, with each taking around a year.  Your student is really young to be starting MCT if it was done in K.  One thing that can be tricky about teaching an advanced kid is that there can be a time when they are too 'out of sync' to do certain curriculum.  The 3rd level of MCT is Voyage, and it teaches students how to write essays by having them read well-written historical documents.  It's challenging reading, and essay writing isn't easy - I'd be hesitant to do it before 5th grade unless your student is really into writing.  You can stretch out the practice sentences, you can take a break from grammar for a while, you could try an editing or writing workbook from the Critical Thinking Company, you can do something fun like the this series https://smile.amazon.com/Root-Toot-Parachute-Words-CATegorical-ebook/dp/B00HNXBVLY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1533057349&sr=8-1&keywords=cleary+verb   or whatever works for you.  Once we got beyond basics (noun, verb, capital letter, punctuation) we didn't do a lot more until 3rd grade or so.  

As for the Latin, I'm not sure why it's a concern about Latin and MCT unless it's just an 'amount of time per day' issue.  MCT does a great job of expanding vocabulary using Latin roots, but if you want to learn Latin as a foreign language, that will be something separate.  Because you probably don't need to do much grammar for 1st and 2nd, if you want to take time and do some Latin, go for it.  By the time that your student gets to 3rd or 4th grade, they can do a longer day of school work and it won't be a problem to do language arts (vocab, lit, writing, grammar) and also a language.  We didn't find MCT until my older was in 4th(we did 3 series over 2 years and are now doing the books at the grade level that I'd like - younger started in 3rd and does 1/year), and he started middle school Latin at our co-op the same year.  At that age, doing both wasn't an issue.

 

Edited August 1, 2018 by ClemsonDana

[Sarah0000]

I'm finding that SSL is reinforcing parts of MCT and if I do Latin and spread out the MCT practice book then I figure it's no big deal to have a two year break in between the levels of MCT. I originally didn't think I'd do Latin in the early years at all so I haven't really looked into how all that works. I'm not really thinking of Latin as foreign language necessarily; we do other foreign language studies.

[EKS]

I wouldn't try to plan ahead too much for a kid who is successful with MCT Island in K.

That said, I found that using Lively Latin with Island and Town was a good choice.

[domestic_engineer]

Not really answering your question - but I'd do the practice book at a MINIMUM of 2x/week.  The practice book is meaty.  So I'd argue that you should do it more than 1x/week.  You may run into some more challenging parts (say - identifying prepositions) and therefore need the more closely-spaced repetition to get it in their brain.  

We started slowing MCT down around the end of Town and beginning of Voyage level.  I think I took the practice book down from 5x/week to 3x/week and occasionally 2x/week.  We added in the literature trilogies (halfheartedly).   @ClemsonDana is right - the writing expectations far exceed the grammar understanding.  Or with a more positive spin, MCT does such a great job explaining things that even young kids can grasp the grammar, vocabulary, and poetics that he teaches.

Another idea to "slow down" the progression would be to read/listen to Grammar Land.

[Cake and Pi]

My same-aged DS#3 finished Island level but wasn't ready to move on to Town, so I gave him the Mud Trilogy to hold him over.  That was very much enjoyed but only lasted a couple of weeks, so I changed our ELA emphasis to writing, which has worked out well.  Now that he's had some time to mature and increase his writing skill and fluency, we're moving on to Town.  I'm familiar with Town because DS#1 just completed it. 

Town is a bit of a jump in difficulty from Island, so my plan is to just savor the level, stretching it out for as long as needed to keep it fun and interesting for DS#3.  There should be plenty of time to fit in other interests doing it this way, so I'd think you could comfortably do MCT Town and SS Latin concurrently.  I also don't see any issue with taking a year or two break from MCT to focus on Latin and then returning later to do it at a more rapid pace.  You'd probably wind up at the same end point in a couple of years either way.

In case you're interested, this is my plan for stretching MCT Town:

The first half-ish of Practice Town is mostly review from Practice Island.  It didn't seem any harder to me than what was in PI and probably easier than that final 20% of PI. Because of this, I'd rather have DS#3 move more quickly through the first half of the sentences doing maybe 3/week and then space out the latter half to ~2/week.  If the rest of Town takes longer, I can drop him down to 1 sentence per week to stretch the practice book even further.  I don't see a problem with 1/week for the final bit after doing the first 70-80 sentences more intensively.  The general idea is probably well grasped by then.

The vocab book is set up so that it alternates between lighter and heavier lessons.  I think it will work well to do Caesar's English I over 30 weeks, spending 1 week per light lesson and 2 weeks per heavier lesson.  

The writing book is what could potentially give an AL pause.  Paragraph Town has the student study the Gettysburg Address and has some 2-3+ paragraph assignments.  I figure that if he isn't ready for it once all the rest of Town is complete, we can just set MCT aside for some months while we focus on writing with other methods and/or curricula again.  

Side note: I have our 2018-2019 school year planned out to be 45 4-day weeks (subject to change, as always, lol), in case you were wondering how those weeks could add up. ?

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

When I saw how quickly my DS was moving through Island, I began alternating it with other Language Arts topics. Now we do Grammar 2x/wk, Writing 1-2x a week, & Reading 1-2x a week. Not sure if it will slow us down enough for Island to last the whole year, but it should help! Perhaps you could alternate Latin, Writing, MCT? 

[Pegs]

We alternate writing weeks with grammar weeks, using CAP's W&R: Fable on our writing weeks, and MCT Town on our grammar weeks.

Latin is a short lesson daily. Mostly GSWL, with a bit of I Speak Latin to keep things interesting.