Thursday, April 15, 2010

Latin for Dummies AKA Me

We've been on vacation visiting family, which isn't really a vacation. We live in a tiny town in NY and so it was nice to do some shopping in a big city. After checking out the language section of a huge Barnes and Noble, I found some Latin flash cards. Even though I hadn't yet done any research on how I wanted to teach Latin, I impulse bought them. I really shouldn't have done it since I don't qualify for their educator's discount yet.

Hubby and I spent some time looking at the cards and realized that we don't know jack about Latin. I started looking up Latin grammar and trying to figure out all the information on the cards. I am bilingual (I'm a white girl in upstate NY and I speak Japanese. How random is that?!) and thought that picking up Latin grammar wouldn't be hard. I was tremendously wrong.

Inspired by my ignorance and knowing that I want my kids to learn Latin, I started looking up language programs. It seems to me that the biggest ones used by homeschoolers are: The Big Book of Lively Latin!, Latin for Children and Latina Christiana.

I liked that Lively Latin had online helps, but their website looked abandoned by users. It is also pretty pricey (understand, I am cheap) and can only be purchased from their website. Latina Christiana had mixed reviews and minimal online support, but you can buy it from major retailers and it's very reasonably priced. I think Latin for Children is my big winner. They have a great website, Headventure Land, that has games that you can customized by what chapter you are studying. The books are well priced. The DVD is a little much, but you don't have to buy it.


















I'll write a review of Latin for Children when I get a chance to use it this summer.

3 comments:

Grace said...

http://www.amazon.com/English-Roots-Up-Flashcards-Vol/dp/1885942133/ref=pd_sim_b_1
English from the roots up is one of my favorite latin and greek books. My kids love the flashcards and it's so easy to understand. No grammar but the word bases are very simple and can help so much with understanding English.

Meridith said...

Thanks Grace! The flashcards that I impulse purchased probably won't be very useful until my kids are much older. I'll check those out.

N & H said...

I loved watching the show on Sunday... I can't wait to recieve the DVD this summer. It was perfect timing, we are studing US history next year.