Favorite Latin Curriculum for Elementary?

[Cabertmom]

Hi, everyone. What Latin programs have you liked and/or disliked for elementary? My 10-year-old son would like to learn Latin, and I may bring his 8-year-old brother along for the ride. 

I have a little bit of experience with Latina Christiana and with Ecce Romani from many years ago, but our older children all studied Italian where I could be of more help. I thought I would learn along with the children, so this needs to be a program that doesn't expect expertise from the parent.

I love the idea of Ecce Romani, but we sort of hit a wall because of my lack of expertise years ago.

Thanks in advance for your responses.

[Miss Tick]

It has been quite a few years, but we liked Getting Started with Latin, followed by the Big Book Of Lively Latin. Latin was not planned to be a long-term study for us, but a few years study to become familiar with the basics. A side benefit was learning about grammatical cares which helped later in understanding German. We preferred the religion-neutral approach in both of these programs. BBoLL does a nice job of incorporating Roman history. Before we took a trip to Italy we pulled out all the history sections we had covered and read them in the evenings for review. I seem to remember the second BBoLL book was a little faster paced and felt like it was squeezing in material at the end without as much of the deliberate pacing and review that the first book had. Overall the Latin study was a positive for us.

There are so many choices out there. I hope you find the right one for your family.

[knitgrl]

GSWL also has a volume two, which I learned too late. Dd was maybe 11 or 12 when we used it. She enjoyed it quite a bit.

[ScoutTN]

Echoing Getting Started with Latin. 

We tried Latin for Children and while parts of it were great, the overall organization, formatting etc. were poor. But that was quite a few years ago and I bet it’s been updated. 
 

Dd ended up using Oxford for outsourced high school level Latin. 

[LauraClark]

I also like GSWL. We did Latin's Not so Tough for a few years and it was fine, but a little dry and repetitive. 

[HomeAgain]

Our path was a bit unique, and we've used a few, but here are things I like about each one:

Latin's Not So Tough - the first two books are an excellent start for a student who is still working with English grammar concepts.  Book 1 is the alphabet, book 2 is basic words.  We didn't do it as intended because the writing spaces are VERY large for a student older than 5yo, but we did do each page with writing practice on a separate sheet and using math counters/markers for the game-like pages (circle the 3 letters that say /a/). 

Getting Started With Latin - lovely, low-key.  There are 180 lessons, I think, but you can go at your pace.  One thing I did was to create blank grammar tables for it.  As my kid learned a new conjugation, he wrote it in the chart next to the appropriate pronoun.  After a few, he was able to see patterns develop.  If your kids like this program, you should check out readers from Lance PIantiaggini.  They're not particularly interesting at first, but the books begin with a vocabulary of 20 unique words, reinforcing the repetitive technique of vocabulary acquisition in GSWL.

Legonium - this is cute, and has both free and paid options.  It's an introduction to Latin told with Legos.  http://www.legonium.com/video-lessons
I linked the video lessons, which are just a slideshow(no sound), but if you go up to Disco 1-20 there's a drop down menu to access the lessons as an independent reader.  Click on the little cross in the upper right corner of each lesson to make them full screen.  They also have a print book option. It's a good follow-on after Latin's Not So Tough, or as a supplement.

Cambridge Latin - This has a nice, intermediate pace to it.  Each new lesson starts with a picture story, ranging from basic two word descriptions "Est Mater" to short sentences.  The chapters should be taken slow, though, since a lot of vocabulary is also introduced in short stories and reinforced in exercises.  The first two books are a full year of high school Latin.  About half of one book is a good pace for elementary.  My son liked it because the stories weren't afraid to get a little gritty and not all happy-happy family stories.

Ecce Romani - this one, aside from the bajillion chapters of the Cornilli family in the ditch, was well liked.  It was well organized, there are several resources available (we bought a teacher's guide on AbeBooks), and found teachers who had put their lessons online.  DS learned quite a bit during his two years with the first book.  It is grammar-heavy, and I would recommend the desk charts from Memoria Press for the Forms if you go this way.  But it also taught the way ds liked to learn - through stories and immersion.

 

[HomeAgain]

On 7/25/2024 at 10:24 PM, ScoutTN said:

We tried Latin for Children and while parts of it were great, the overall organization, formatting etc. were poor. But that was quite a few years ago and I bet it’s been updated. 
 

DS used the revised edition after First Form.  He red-penned it a lot more than a 9yo should ever have to do, and I was not amused when I finally found the errata hidden on their website reinforcing that he was right.

Not a fan of this at all, especially because of the errors, but also because the fully consumable nature makes it impossible to use with multiple students.

[knitgrl]

Dd13 did 1.5 years of Latin for Children. She did really well with it, but got tired of the repetitive lessons. It was the exact same thing for every lesson. Dd is a remarkably compliant child, and even she complained about it after awhile.

[purpleowl]

Lively Latin has worked well for my kids.

[happypamama]

Another vote for Getting Started With Latin!