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.