Latin seems to be a fail at this moment

[Janeway]

We are using First Form Latin. Son really liked Getting Started with Latin. He liked it enough that he would walk around with the book and take notes from it and everything. But he does NOT like FFL. He seems tortured when I suggest doing it. My older son did it and he did extremely well in Latin, including winning the Gold award from the National Latin exam two years running. So it was a great program for the kids who wanted to learn Latin. Well, sort of. That son also tells me it was incredibly boring and he is not sure if he could recommend it. 

Should I just shelve the FFL? Or should I just rid of it? Is there something else I should consider doing? He is in 6/7th grade.

[Zoo Keeper]

Have you done Keep Going with Latin?  http://www.gettingstartedwithlatin.com/index.html  I haven't used it since it's new-ish. 

Around that age/grade, one of my sons did really well with Latin Book One.  It's an old vintage Latin book that used to have files on Yahoo, but has moved to FB.

 

Edited August 20, 2021 by Zoo Keeper

[LauraClark]

I'm not a great person to answer this since we have had Latin troubles of our own, but FFL (or the book prior...can't remember which one we tried) did not work for us. We switched to Latins Not so Tough (which we are currently on break from). That curriculum seemed like it would be a good fit for us. We're just have a problem squeezing everything in so have mostly dropped Latin for now. I plan to go back to LNsT in a couple years, though.

ETA: I'm not sure I'm being helpful, but if you're looking for an alternative or permission to change curriculums: permission granted 😉

Edited August 21, 2021 by LauraClark

[Bonnie]

Your son sounds like a mature learner if he walked around with his Latin book and took notes from it. Normally, a student would not start Henle I until 8th grade. But you might consider it for him and go at a slower pace than for an older student. It is different from the Forms; it teaches the grammar but is more oriented toward preparing the student to read Latin. It is a great Latin text, with historical background as well, and it will accustom him to read simple sentences and passages. He could take up to three years to complete it and still have several years to read Caesar and Cicero in Henle II and Henle III. You should be aware that it has Christian content in case that is a concern.

Bonnie

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by Bonnie

[HomeAgain]

My kid loved GSWL, too.  When we switched to FFL, he enjoyed the repetitiveness of it at first, but a few months in it became a drag. By Feb/March it was driving us both insane.  The main reason he had chosen it was because it had video lessons, a clean format, and the video professor didn't sing or get overly excited about stupid things.  But, no.  So I had him treading water with Cambridge Latin, which applied the vocabulary and grammar he already knew and expanded on it.

The next year I thought, well, he liked the story aspect well enough.  We'll try Latin For Children A.  HUGE FAIL. It was not orderly, not written well (dude, when a 9yo takes a red pen to the work, it's not a good sign), and just overall not a good fit for a kid who likes things to be exact.

Last year we sat down and brainstormed again.  Cambridge was fun, but needed more grammar instruction than what we had.  LFC A was a no.  FFL was a no.  I picked up Kraken Latin, Matin Latin, and Ecce Romani at a book sale.  Any of the 3 would have been a decent fit, but Ecce Romani had just what we needed: story based, lots of grammar exercises, lots of translation, and a decent progression so we could stay with the same program for the next 4 years.  So, here we are.  And he really enjoys it, even if it does get hard.  It's a lot of work on my part, though, because it's not self-teaching.