Lively Latin help

[Alison in KY]

Hi everyone, sorry I have more questions.

 

We are still on lesson 1 and I'm trying to get in the flow of things. I know nothing about Latin. I have put all of the history readings together to possibly do at a later date. What I am trying to do is 15 minutes of Latin daily, plus time spent listening to the audio chants.

 

I think I'm still a bit intimidated. There's alot of info going on and my grammar is pretty rotten. I want this to work out. Is there a recommended flow that you would do to the program? I plan on setting the timer and just doing 15 minutes of seatwork. Sound okay? Something about it is confusing me and I can't put my finger on it?

 

Do you sit with your child and review the previous material? This is for a just turned 10 yr old who doesn't like independent work. I'm not sure if I let him loose on the program what he'd wind up taking away from it. I'm just not sure how to teach it.

 

Twice now I've had my son take his Voc. A sheet to the computer and listen/say the words and chants. I had thought the English word was also said, but he said that isn't repeated. So he is only saying the Latin without learning what it means. I know some of you said you didn't do the flashcards, so how else would you get them to learn both the Latin and English?

 

Any other ideas? Does it just take a couple weeks to get your bearings in this?

 

Thank you,

Alison

[Alison in KY]

One more thing, I can't get the online games to work. What password do you use? I tried the same one as when I sign onto LL, but it doesn't work. And I installed Java, like it said.

 

Help??

[Shasta Mom]

Well, if it's any consolation, lesson 1 seemed to take us forever, and I had my doubts. For some reason, it's the crux pitch of the book. I'm not sure why the games don't work - I'll defer to someone else on that.

 

For the chants, it's good that dc does them so he can learn the pronunciation. Make the flash cards and memorize their meanings. A nice aspect of LL is that there aren't a lot of vocabulary words - it's more grammar-based...We chose to do each lesson in the order presented to break things up (and so I wouldn't have to plan yet another curriculum), so when a history selection was next we did it. We ended up loving the history and we now look forward to it.

 

My newly 10 ds is now on lesson 11 after starting mid september. I anticipate finishing bb1 at the end of August (perhaps).

 

Just keep plugging, don't forget the flash cards, and enjoy it. I think it will all come around. It has been my favorite curriculum of the year out of all that we use, and I've been pretty happy with our selections......HTH

[SBP]

Hi everyone, sorry I have more questions.

 

We are still on lesson 1 and I'm trying to get in the flow of things. I know nothing about Latin. I have put all of the history readings together to possibly do at a later date. What I am trying to do is 15 minutes of Latin daily, plus time spent listening to the audio chants.

 

I think I'm still a bit intimidated. There's alot of info going on and my grammar is pretty rotten. I want this to work out. Is there a recommended flow that you would do to the program? I plan on setting the timer and just doing 15 minutes of seatwork. Sound okay? Something about it is confusing me and I can't put my finger on it?

 

Mileage varies, of course, but I don't think 15 minutes would be quite enough for my children. I usually try to do 1 lesson plus 1 exercise (so 2 pages) of LL seatwork, plus whatever time reviewing flashcards. Usually it all comes to about a half hour or so. Less than that, and I think we wouldn't have enough time to really work with the new grammar.

 

Do you sit with your child and review the previous material? This is for a just turned 10 yr old who doesn't like independent work. I'm not sure if I let him loose on the program what he'd wind up taking away from it. I'm just not sure how to teach it.

 

I know many people have said that LL is "nearly self-teaching" but it just isn't so at my house. I absolutely sit with my kids, and I read each lesson out loud while they follow along in their LL books. Once we all seem to have grasped whatever the new material is, I do turn them loose on the exercises, but I stay right there and help if they need it. I think of it more as me learning alongside them rather than me teaching them, and that takes some of the pressure off and makes it kind of fun - like we're solving a puzzle together.

 

Twice now I've had my son take his Voc. A sheet to the computer and listen/say the words and chants. I had thought the English word was also said, but he said that isn't repeated. So he is only saying the Latin without learning what it means. I know some of you said you didn't do the flashcards, so how else would you get them to learn both the Latin and English?

 

We use the audio chants the first couple of days after a new vocabulary list is introduced, just to learn the pronunciation, and then we switch to flashcard review. As you noted, the audio doesn't have translation, but it's very helpful to hear someone who knows what they're doing saying the words out loud.

 

We also keep the vocabulary lists at hand, and I let my children consult them as needed. Actually using the words is the best way for them to internalize them, I think, and LL provides so much in the way of vocabulary review that my children seem to learn the words without a huge amount of drill.

 

It does take a couple of weeks to get your bearings. I wish you the best of luck as you figure it all out :).

 

SBP

[siloam]

Alison,

 

We are taking it really slow, we only do one exercise a day, or one reading. Basically one page at a time.

 

With the vocab I honest say what the words mean in my mind, but not aloud. I know my dd covers them daily on her own as well. Usually we review on Monday an old vocab set, then do the new the rest of the week. Neither of us have had problems remembering what the words mean, but I think you could say them aloud if you wanted to. With how slow we are moving we do a lot of review though. :D

 

We have never done the games.

 

Heather

[Alison in KY]

Thank you, anyone else?

[Alana in Canada]

It took us a year and a half to do Lively Latin. We did take a bit of a break last summer--and that was a big mistake. Do a little everyday, (Even just the vocab) and you'll be fine!

 

I had a 10-11 year old and a 7-8 year old girl. We started with one lesson and excercise per day. We did the history whenever it came up. (Some days it was the only way my son would do Latin. He loved the History, the actual Latin, not so much.)

 

We sat down at the computer and did the chants every single day (well, 4-5x/week). (I encouraged the kids to say the English after saying the Latin). I made up vocabulary Bingo cards--here's the site: http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/materials/bingo/5/

 

I'd write the Latin on the card and say the English. (You could also make some up in reverse). We'd use M&M's. They love it.

 

The flashcards are useful--IF you keep up with them and start sorting them into nouns and verbs (and later, adjectives). Once you have the nouns--colour coding them by declension would have been a fantastic thing for us to have done. (In fact, I think I will do just that next week. We're done, but I want to do some solid review before we carry on.)

 

Once you have verb endings and declensions to memorize, set up a drill sheet. I stole mine from someone here (I forget who! Cajun Classical--was it you?) but I will attach ours. I used the one called "sum" 2x--once fr the three tenses of sum, and one for the three tenses of all the other verb endings. The second sheet is for the noun endings.

 

Modify them to suit your needs, ok?

 

Here was our daily procedure.

A.

1) Send one child to the computer to do current vocabulary sheet.

2) Have second child fill out the drill sheets.

reverse.

B.

1) Read Lesson out-loud, together.

2) Do excercises together. Use vocabulary sheets as necessary.

If it's history, I just had the kids take turns reading out-loud. We did whatever there was to do as follow up. We did not do the History booklet. However, you could--and have that be your history curriculuum for the year (you could even supplement it (as it is the text of Famous Men of Rome and something else (I forget) with a Green Leaf guide!). Ok, sorry, TMI. I just wish I had done this! :D

 

C. We really should have taken a day and dispensed with the vocab at the computer and dome our Vocab Bingo more regularily. My daughter was the only one who played the games. (and I couldn't get them to work for a while either. I just kept downloading Java until, one day, mysteriously, they worked.) Her grasp of vocabulary is much better than my son's.

 

ps. Sorry for the novel!

Edited May 2, 2009 by Alana in Canada

[Alana in Canada]

oops, I don't know what happened to the attachments. Let me try that again.

[Alison in KY]

Thank you all, this was very helpful. I still don't know how to do the games, I've tried 3 times already. I'm hoping the magistra will email me back.

 

Alison

[latinteach]

You might like English Grammar for Students of Latin by Norma Goldman for yourself. This book explains grammar in a very clear way and relates it to the Latin. You may find it helpful.

[Closeacademy]

We started in January and are on lesson 5. We go at the rate of 1 lesson per month spreading it out so that each day we do 1 page or story. Sometimes, we do the art study or character study right after we do the story.

 

Something that I did was make a reference lapbook for the important information that we use over and over again like the chants and the vocabulary. This way if she doesn't remember something she can look it up.

 

We have been lax on the chants but the plan after break is to do Latin like this:

 

Chants

Vocabulary

written work

 

Good luck and I hope you get the games going. I forgot all about them.

[Malenki]

Alison,

 

(We've never done the online games so I can't help with that.)

 

We're taking it nice and slowly with our focus being on mastery. We do one page per day, five days a week. When we get to new vocabulary and chants we take as long as needed to master it, which is usually just 2-3 days since that's all we focus on, before moving on. I find he does better on the worksheets if he knows the vocabulary cold; then the grammar is all he's learning.

 

For studying the vocabulary we do the flashcards. I literally cut out the sheet and use a glue stick to stick them onto an index card cut in half. We use a pencil and write the English on the back. That's it! We go through them once a day until he has them down. We'll say it right out including the English word and then flip it over.

 

I sit right with my son and am learning alongside him. We only take about 10-15 minutes a day to get through one worksheet. We do better with doing "one sheet" or "this side today" then doing a timer, but that's just us.

[Alison in KY]

Alison,

 

(We've never done the online games so I can't help with that.)

 

We're taking it nice and slowly with our focus being on mastery. We do one page per day, five days a week. When we get to new vocabulary and chants we take as long as needed to master it, which is usually just 2-3 days since that's all we focus on, before moving on. I find he does better on the worksheets if he knows the vocabulary cold; then the grammar is all he's learning.

 

For studying the vocabulary we do the flashcards. I literally cut out the sheet and use a glue stick to stick them onto an index card cut in half. We use a pencil and write the English on the back. That's it! We go through them once a day until he has them down. We'll say it right out including the English word and then flip it over.

 

I sit right with my son and am learning alongside him. We only take about 10-15 minutes a day to get through one worksheet. We do better with doing "one sheet" or "this side today" then doing a timer, but that's just us.

 

So you are saying that you stop everything else and just work on vocabulary for however long it takes to know them all, then you pick back up? Do your kids retain the grammar and other part of the lesson doing this?

 

Alison

[Malenki]

So you are saying that you stop everything else and just work on vocabulary for however long it takes to know them all, then you pick back up? Do your kids retain the grammar and other part of the lesson doing this?

 

 

That's exactly what we do! So when that Vocabulary sheet came up in order we stopped all "progress" with the worksheets until we had it down cold. It did not take long to learn; 2-4 days really. I print out one lesson at a time and put it into a binder. We just take the sheets in order as they come.

 

We found then that as the worksheets were done it was cementing the vocabulary instead of us using the vocabulary sheet and/or flashcards to know what word to use. We have on occasion had me refer back to the sheet to make sure we spelled the word correctly but he'd already vocalized what the answer was so it was just a matter of writing it.

 

He's had no problem retaining the grammar at all. It's very light so far and it does show up again here and there as review. So far I've been very pleased with the grammar presentation and how's it's building up step by step.

 

Also, there isn't new vocabulary with every lesson. So in Lesson 1 ("A") and 2 ("B") but then 3 is a breather for new vocab; then new stuff in 4 and 5 is another breather; new in 6 and 7 is a breather; and so on. You keep using the words previously learned as you go.

 

We went this way because I had read of some people getting lost in Lesson 10 or 12 or so and they would say they didn't know the vocab and had flown through the earlier lessons with the child doing 2-3 sheets a day (using the vocab sheet to fill it in) and now they were lost. I figured we'd be better off with slow and steady progress that stuck so when we get further down the line we won't feel overwhelmed!

 

Does that make any sense? We're not flying through the material but at the same time we aren't dawdling either. He loves it! So I figure that's half the battle, right? :)

[Alana in Canada]

So when that Vocabulary sheet came up in order we stopped all "progress" with the worksheets until we had it down cold. It did not take long to learn; 2-4 days really.

 

Brilliant! If you can do this, you won't be sorry you did.