Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Latin?

MY DS6 wants to learn Latin. His spelling tests at school are taken off the spelling bee list and they come with the root attached. He noticed that many words have Latin roots and so he wants to learn Latin.

I need suggestions for programs. curriculum etc... Does Rosetta Stone do latin?

Salve, Shari!

Yes, there is Rosetta Stone Latin (we've not used it).

There are several religious Latin programmes designed for elementary-aged homeschoolers (Prima Latina, Latina Christiana, Lingua Angelica, etc.), none of which I have seen, but which are available from places like Rainbow Resource. Oh, a couple others which homeschoolers often mention are Lively Latin and Latin for Children (check the Well-Trained Mind K-8 forum for reviews of all of these).

There's also a book called English from the Roots Up, if you are just wanting some root-work, as well as Michael Clay Thompson's vocabulary books (Building Language and Caesar's English, available from Royal Fireworks Press). There's a card game called Rummy Roots, which uses both Latin and Greek roots.

My boys (soon to be 4, 6, 8--wow, it feels weird to type that!) have used Minimus and Minimus Secundus by Barbara Bell; it's a Latin programme designed for British elementary and middle schools and is printed by Cambridge. It's fun, secular, cute (comic-strip style), and centres around a real family who lived at Vindolanda (a fort in the north of England). There's not a great deal of grammar in the first one, but more in the second; it's definitely a reading approach, rather than a grammar approach. There is root-work in every chapter. The Teacher's Manual has lots of interesting activities, and the CDs use Classical pronunciation. There are supplementary readers (mini-books) available from the author's website.

We've also used Learning Latin through Mythology (also published by Cambridge, written by Jayne Hanlin); every chapter has an illustrated (B&W) Roman myth in simplified Latin, and again in more complicated English, with a few simple questions and some activities.

Also on the shelves here (we're not quite ready to dive right in, although we've twiddled around with these a bit) are the two Esopus Hodie volumes (available only from the American Classical League), with Aesop's Fables in English and Latin and some attendant questions for each, and The Young Romans, by Rose Williams (short biographical passages adapted from Livy, Pliny, Suetonius, and Tacitus about Romans who achieved something noteworthy in their childhood), with questions, crossword puzzles, a few activities; this one is published by Bolchazy-Carducci. The ACL also has some teaching Latin materials for for young children, mostly by Kris Tracy, I believe. Bolchazy-Carducci has other books by Rose Williams that look fun--some "easy reader" type picture books. (There are in fact several children's books translated into Latin--Cat in the Hat, the Grinch, Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter, Ferdinand the Bull, etc., but these are a great deal more difficult than the other things I am listing here--despite the fact that they are children's stories, the Latin is not suited for beginners. The only thing of this sort that is within reach, for us, anyway, is Mater Anserina, by Terence Tunberg--Mother Goose rhymes, with a CD included.)

Something I really like the look of (it's in my shopping cart at amazon, but I haven't quite pushed 'send' yet) is Hans Oerberg's Lingua Latina. It's an immersion text with a continuous story line; even the grammar explanations are in Latin (with some little graphics to help). My kids live for narrative--if it's a story, they'll eat up anything! And this book looks unique, to me--there's no other Latin book out there that's quite like this one, as far as I know.

Anyway, hope some of that rattling helps a bit!

Vale!
minnie

We started with Minimus and Minimus Secundus, both of which DS really enjoyed around that age. You do have to get the teacher's guide, though... that's where most of the activities are. Unfortunately it's priced for a teacher who plans to use it frequently, so it's not cheap!

After Minimus we went on to Lingua Latina, and have really liked that. It is challenging... very very challenging... but the hard work pays off, and you really do start out reading real Latin right away, which is very cool. For that one you need the text, the exercise book and the College Companion (which combines several of the other grammar reference materials in one volume). We also got the teacher's edition of the exercise book so I could check his work more easily (not being fluent myself...) and an extra reader just for fun.

Maybe this would appease him for now... He's already taking Chinese via Rosetta Stone.

It worked! When I sat down with him and explained that he could learn about the origins of words without actually having to learn the language, he agreed that would be better. His reasoning? Then he could learn Chinese, which is what he really wants!