The Oft Discussed Latin

[Green Bean]

I’m ready to take the plunge in teaching my kids Latin, but I don’t like MP’s Latin program. This is for 3 early to late middle school ability kids. We are absolute beginners.
What do you use and why do you like it? 

 

Edited April 20, 2022 by Green Bean

[HomeAgain]

We really liked Getting Started With Latin.  It's gentle with only one new word or concept each day.  The kids can take turns translating, but I did find it helpful to have my kid fill in verb sheets and have available copies of the grammar lessons (I typed and printed).  The entire lesson takes about 10 minutes and lets you decide how much of your day you want to devote to it before jumping in with more.

It's easy to scale up, too.  Legonium is free and cute, and will introduce words in a different order than GSWL, so you can always add it on for those who are more interested.

DS used a hodgepodge of products, so here's our whole progression just in case you wanted to see:

Latin's Not So Tough - book 1 for alphabet and basic words.

Getting Started With Latin

First Form - he got bored with this by February and we added in Cambridge book 1.  Cambridge is a translation heavy text with cute stories.

Latin For Children (co-oping with another kid).  Hated it.  There were errors and too much busy work meandering around without getting to a point.  It felt like someone threw up Latin and tried tor organize the mess.

Ecce Romani - Because he loved GSWL and Cambridge, I realized he would do better with a translation based text.  It took him 2 years to do book 1 but it hit that sweet spot between intensive grammar and translation texts.  He wouldn't have been prepared without the earlier years, but it was a really good program for him.

[Miss Tick]

Another thing we did with GSWL once we were a few weeks in was to add some practice going the other way - I would give the solution and they had to come up with the Latin.

I think there is a Keeping Going with Latin follow-on book now.

[Ting Tang]

We used MP's prima level for my 3rd grader. It was alright, but I didn't make him memorize the prayers.

We tried First Form Latin for my 4th grader.  It was bland, and he really didn't have a frame of reference with culture, and he hated it.

I decided to buy Minimus---the comic book style program.  It's been great for us.  Minimus Secundus is more middle school level, but in the same style.  It is part of Cambridge Latin.  I think if he continues with Latin, we will do Cambridge.  It's similar in approach with translating to help learn the language while making it interesting.

MP was not going to spark my son's interest in learning Latin at all. 

Edited April 17, 2022 by Ting Tang

[bensonduck]

I am using the Big Book of Lively Latin with my son and we are really enjoying it so far. 

[alisha]

We also liked Getting Started with Latin. I was able to find it at my library to preview it. It's short and easy to do and they're actually learning and retaining. I did periodically make a sheet of the words, pronunciation and meaning, so we could have sort of a "cheat sheet" and didn't have to keep looking back in the lessons as we were translating.

Edited April 17, 2022 by alisha

[cintinative]

We used Latin for Children and Latin Alive.  I looked at the MP program after the fact and I think it might have served my kids better. It has a lot more repetition built in, which we were missing.  That was one thing that my kids both complained about with their Latin--not enough review was built in.  Also there were tons of new vocabulary every week.

Latin for Children has been revised over the years, so I would be careful about your edition. We used the older editions, but it seems like they have made substantial changes to the program.  I would want to look at the "newer" editions and see what the changes are before I think I am getting a deal with the old ones. 

IMO, the activity workbooks for Latin for Children were a waste of time.  However, I think those have also been revised.

We did the history readers for Latin for Children and a couple of readers from Fluency Matters and a tiny bit of Lingua Latina. Some people think that immersion is really the best way to learn a language, and I can see the benefit, but I lacked the time and ability to plan out special course. I know some people really love Lingua Latina.  

I bought a teacher's training course for Latin for Children (taught by Karen Moore) and it really helped me, although that was also for the older edition.  It's out of print now.  

If you are looking to have your child one day take the National Latin Exam, I have been warned to avoid Visual Latin in that case.  

 

[Slache]

Mine is doing Getting Started With Latin and Keep Going With Latin with the hopes of beginning Oxford in 7th. Just laying a few foundations before diving in. He's also doing Duolingo on the side.

I had heavily considered CAP but I felt their Spanish program progressed too quickly. For the record if a child is older you can do Latin Primer A, then B, then strait to Latin Alive. Latin Alive is based on I believe Cambridge? Someone correct me on that? I have never had CAP's Latin materials in my hand.

Outside of Oxford, Cambridge, CAP, and MP I have not considered anything else because it's all beginner programs. I don't want to just do beginner, I want to go on to the next level, and the next until he's reading.

If it were an option I would do Lukeion, hands down.

[cintinative]

1 hour ago, Slache said:

 

I had heavily considered CAP but I felt their Spanish program progressed too quickly. For the record if a child is older you can do Latin Primer A, then B, then strait to Latin Alive. Latin Alive is based on I believe Cambridge? Someone correct me on that? I have never had CAP's Latin materials in my hand.

 

They said we could do this, and this is what my oldest did (LFC A and B and then Latin Alive 1). My youngest did LFC C first and still struggled with the pacing of vocabulary memory work in Latin Alive. He has a processing issue that I didn't know about at the time.  Again, one of our big issues was the lack of review in the program.

I am not sure what Latin Alive is based on. This is a good thread about the lack of review in Latin Alive.

 

Incidentally, I used extra ungraded quizzes and worksheets to help with our review for Latin Alive and could send them to whoever. I got almost all of them from the now-defunct Yahoo group for LA users. 

[Green Bean]

No CAP, then. Gotcha.

 

[mjbucks1]

I absolutely love Latin for Children.  I am going through it for the third time with my niece whom I am homeschooling.  When I started teaching Latin I had no experience.  I think the pace is good.  The activity book is not necessary, but my kids have enjoyed going through it.  I do like the reader, but occasionally there are words that the student does not know and they are not in the glossary (but the answer key is on CAP website, so it is not an issue).  I have also purchased the additional tests that we use at the end of each unit.

My older kids have transitioned to Lukeion Latin well after going through this series (which uses Wheelocks Latin).  My youngest son is in Latin I at Lukeion this year and has 100% in the class (and just took the National Latin exam and received a Gold Medal).  I made sure that he memorized all the principal parts of all the verbs, as well as the genders of all of the nouns, and all the paradigms presented in LFC which has been a big help in Lukeion.  My oldest did MP Latin years ago, but I did not like it as well as LFC.     

[Dianthus]

On 4/17/2022 at 11:08 AM, Slache said:

If it were an option I would do Lukeion, hands down.

Why isn't it an option?

[Slache]

9 hours ago, Spirea said:

Why isn't it an option?

Right now my health will not allow for such a time commitment. We still have one more year on little person Latin before we start with the big books, so I may change my mind.

[Dianthus]

52 minutes ago, Slache said:

Right now my health will not allow for such a time commitment. We still have one more year on little person Latin before we start with the big books, so I may change my mind.

This is the online class? Wouldn't it be less time for you?

We've never done online classes and am considering.

[Slache]

4 minutes ago, Spirea said:

This is the online class? Wouldn't it be less time for you?

We've never done online classes and am considering.

I feel like I need to be there because he will only be in 7th grade. We have never done an online class before. I'm also concerned about the time commitment of doing Lukion Latin AND Lukion Greek AND Derek Owens math, as I plan to start outsourcing math in 7th as well. I feel like that's a lot.

[Green Bean]

The kids voted for French instead! Go figure. I bought MP First Start French today at my DD’s request. Guess I better search for French threads now.

[Ting Tang]

35 minutes ago, Green Bean said:

The kids voted for French instead! Go figure. I bought MP First Start French today at my DD’s request. Guess I better search for French threads now.

French is such a fun language. Next to Latin, I believe it’s quite beneficial. Hope they enjoy it! 

[HomeAgain]

7 hours ago, Green Bean said:

The kids voted for French instead! Go figure. I bought MP First Start French today at my DD’s request. Guess I better search for French threads now.

DS12 has loved his years with French!  Per his request, we are rewatching all the Telefrancais episodes. He is getting so much more out of them now.

[Green Bean]

Home/ mind sharing what you did?

[HomeAgain]

1 hour ago, Green Bean said:

Home/ mind sharing what you did?

We started young, around 2nd grade, so just keep that in mind. And, they don't like to make programs that encourage more than 4 years of language study, so much of this is me going rogue. 🙂 After using yearly programs and then going off on our own, the years never quite finished.  They just rolled into each other and I added/dropped things as we went along.

Year 1: One-Third Stories.  This was a subscription box where we'd get a package each month containing a book, audiobook link, activity book, and flash cards.  The new words were woven into an English story and only increased slightly over the year.

Year 2 & 3: Nallenart's L'art de Lire.  I bought the pdfs.  Short, 3x a week lessons.  Slightly Christian in nature (Mimi the mouse has a bible, I think the word for 'church' is learned, a small introduction to a few other things).  It had audio, and workbook pages with different activities each day.  It focused on teaching phonics as well as the vocabulary, with each section focused on a different sound.  I paired this with First Step En Francais, which he was not amused by. LOL  I ended up replacing that with Telefrancais.

Year 4ish: We dabbled with Getting Started With French for grammar while working through children's stories.  I bought J'apprends a lire avec Sami et Julie books (level 1, debut de CP).  This link is to Amazon, but I ordered from Amazon. fr.  There was more of a selection - you can probably do the same from Canadian Amazon and have the site still in English.  Anyhow, he liked them because they gave visual cues on phonetic code. I paired it with a 180 day type workbook for the same level (Classe Primaire/CP) and preschool programming on Netflix that I could change languages on.  Trotro was a favorite because it was so repetitive.  We also added in books from Fluency Matters, which are fabulous.  Each one has a controlled vocabulary that increases as a child gets more comfortable.

Year 5ish.  This year.  Still watching some French programming.  Finished the CP workbook.  I bought more books from Fluency Matters and this time started buying the online activities to go with.  It is about $8 extra per book, but they're little quizzes that make him interact more with the material.  I also slipped in weekly work with a McGraw-Hill Easy French Reader. It has a free app to go with it, and there are questions for each story, but I will caution that the glossary is slim and expects at least a year 2 student.  It's easy, but it's not a child's book.  I made my own worksheets so that he had some place to write the answers.  I also started taking a week or so at a time and theming it around classic stories like The Hungry Caterpillar, spreading out more intensive work by working with more familiar material.  We did a Five-in-a-Row style where we'd listen/watch it in French every day, do a focused activity, and review the previous days' activities.  Any book I could find that would work on basic vocabulary (time, food, community), I did.  He is at the point now where even though he is not always comfortable speaking or writing French, he can read and listen to it quite well if it is at a slow to moderate pace.  We'll continue working on more expressive skills (speaking, writing) now that his receptive ones are doing fine.

 

Our goal has always been to take him back to France (he last visited as a toddler) and have him feel comfortable enough.  It's not everyone's goal, and really, if a kid doesn't enjoy the work after a while they absolutely should back away for a bit. Or find something that does let them enjoy it.  DS12 likes immersion style work and it works well for him.  Lots of vocab, but grammar as needed. My oldest would have run screaming from French.  He didn't particularly enjoy learning another language and one where the written and spoken feel so different would have sent him off his rocker.  So, we didn't press the issue.  We exposed him to it, had him learn a few years of Latin, made sure he could ask for help in whatever country we were in and had a good base in those languages, but he eventually gravitated to Spanish and a great teacher who helped him love that language. I'm a little disappointed, but I know it was rough for him to grasp grammatical concepts and spelling as a kid so I'm honestly really proud of him that he took up a second language and found joy in it.

[Laurel-in-CA]

We used Latin for Children 1-3 starting in 4th grade with my last kid, did some Aesop Hodie simple translating / read aloud, and then moved on to Latin Alive 1. Latin Alive's translations are very history oriented. It was really tough for my kid and we stalled out a few units into Latin Alive 2. Not having any background in latin (my college language was French), I just didn't feel there was adequate support for me as a teacher or review for my student. We fell back on an old college textbook, Latin via Ovid, with its textbook and just kept reading and translating, called it Year 1 latin and done. The plan was always that dd would do a modern language at community college while in high school. DD chose Spanish and said that she felt that her latin grammar and vocabulary served her well. Out of 4 kids, that was the best review I had of my latin efforts, LOL.