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Joined: Jun 2009
Posts: 91
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DD9 has decided she wants to tackle Latin this summer (actually, she initially wanted to do Greek, but my Greek's even rustier than my Latin, so I thought we'd do Latin first). Does anyone have a recommendation for a good book to start with?
She's into mythology at the moment, so the Galore Latin Prep books looked interesting, mainly because they seem to be more story-based than other sets. The Minimus Mouse books look cute too, but I don't know if they might end up being too young for her. Any opinions?
Thanks!
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Joined: Apr 2009
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Our PG kid really enjoyed Minimus at age 8. He went on to more in-depth Latin study later, but it was a good place to start. After Minimus I would suggest Ecce Romani and Oxford Latin. One good thing with Ecce Romani is that it is the most popular secular program which means there are tons of free resources (quizzes, etc.) available online. Also, before too long take a look at the National Latin Exam and the National Mythology Exam if those are of interest. http://www.nle.org/ http://www.etclassics.org/nme.html Neither exam has age restrictions and are open to homeschoolers.
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Passthepotatoes makes good recommendations. I teach Latin 2, 3, and AP Latin at a public high school. I bought Minimus for my then 2nd grade DD at a conference and she loved it for the cute factor. It was not very rigorous for her, though.
I teach Latin for Americans which is Boring (note the capital B). Long story about why I teach it - public school, textbook adoptions, yadda yadda.
The Minimus books are part of the Cambridge family of books, which are also good. The books themselves are very small and portable, which I like. Like Ecce and Oxford, Cambridge follows a story arc throughout the book which encourages interest in the learner.
I second the recommendation to look into the NLE. The syllabus is published on their website so the student can prepare well.
Bonam Fortunam!!
DD12, 7th. Dx'd ADHD/GAD. No IQ test. EXPLORE & SAT just miss DYS but suspect HG+
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PTP or ZarfKitty,
For Minimus, are you familiar with the Teacher Resource book, and do you think it is beneficial to have, or do you think the Student version is sufficient?
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Dear Mama, We used Minimus and Minimus Secundus here, and I found the teacher's books very helpful to have; you could manage without them if you know some Latin yourself, but they have lots of interesting background information, some good ideas for doing Latin "across the curriculum," and some fun worksheets. Also don't miss taking a look at the Minimus website, where there are some good games and other fun activities. We also ordered both sets of minibooks, which I'd recommend, too. Minimus is designed to segue into Cambridge Latin, which also has lots of online resources. Trillium, maybe I'll just tell a little bit about what else we've looked at here, and if you have any more questions, do let me know. We didn't follow Minimus Secundus up with Cambridge, but switched to Hans Oerberg's Lingua Latina (part one is called Familia Romana), which we are loving (Harpo [9] and Groucho [7] and I are working through this quite slowly; it's too old for Chico [5]). It's "direct method" Latin--it's all in Latin, the vocabulary definitions, the grammar explanations, everything--it's written absolutely brilliantly, in my estimation. The story is interesting, and very witty in spots. There are also lots of teacher helps available from the publisher (Focus). Other things we have around here (for fun, for later, for I didn't know how else to spend my birthday money last year...) are Latin via Ovid (Wayne State University Press), which looks quite good to me; Esopus Hodie (available from the American Classical League, in two volumes), which we have liked for some extra reading practice; Learning Latin through Mythology (Hanlin and Lichtenstein, from Cambridge, too), also good reading practice; and Rose Williams's The Young Romans, which I also like. All but the Latin via Ovid (which is a university text) are aimed at youngish learners, but are not juvenile. Just as an aside, there's a great blog by someone called Latinteach who has lots of informative posts about choosing curriculum, various contests one can enter, and so on. It's at http://latinteach.blogspot.com/Hope this helps a bit! peace minnie ETA: I should say that Lingua Latina is of course not really meant for 9 year olds, but we have found that it works pretty well if you don't try to go too fast (my kids all just had their birthdays, so we actually spent the 8/6 year on it, not the 9/7, and it was fine). They both have a pretty good grasp of grammar from their English and French studies (they have done some work on word roots, too), so they had a bit of a head start on some of the points that came up in LL. I am no Latin expert, though, and defer to the expertise of others here who obviously are!
Last edited by minniemarx; 06/04/10 08:53 AM.
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I never looked at the Minimus resource book since I'm fluent in Latin. Sorry that I can't give a critique! :-(
DD12, 7th. Dx'd ADHD/GAD. No IQ test. EXPLORE & SAT just miss DYS but suspect HG+
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It occurs to me that maybe I should mention the reason we didn't keep going with Cambridge (which sounds by all accounts to be an excellent programme), in case this would trouble your child, too: the story line takes place in Pompeii, and Harpo is extremely sensitive about death. I knew he wouldn't be able to handle getting close to characters in the books who would ultimately die in the ash, so we went down a different path.
mm
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Just to give another option, our family is doing a Latin lesson together every day at the breakfast table, using William Linney's Getting Started With Latin. It has no bells or whistles, but it's suitable for all ages and very reasonably priced ($18 for the non-consumable textbook, with free online audio files). Everyone is enjoying the lessons, from DH down to the little ones. Our 4 year old can only answer the very easiest questions, but our 6 year old is doing very well, so I don't think a 9 year old would have trouble catching on.
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Zarfkitty, I bet you'll know the answer to this question. I've been trying to remember the name of the high school Latin books I used (so I can pick some up on ebay for old times sake!). They were probably published in the early to mid 80s, the first book was green, the 2nd orange, and the very first lesson was about Italy (Sicilia insula est. Italia insula non est. Italia paene insula est. Italia paeninsula est). There was another early lesson about farmers watching a little girl, and another with a sailor that saved a girl from the water. I think the orange book started out with the dreaded subjunctive case and a bunch of stories about two friends on a journey together. Hope this rings a bell!
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Trillium,
That is definitely Latin for Americans. It's been in publication forever and a day and I've taught out of two editions. The current editions have a red first book, a green second book, and a blue third book. The edition right before this one is dark red, mustard yellow, blue.
My DD can handle LFA just fine. But it's dry, dense, vertical grammar with little care given to motivating struggling students. (Our DC wouldn't struggle - this is a critique on using it in public schools.) Vertical grammar is "old school." It's arbitrary to teach 1st declension before 2nd, etc. That isn't really how brains acquire a second language. It feels like work. I'm interested to hear your comments on LFA if you ebay for it... my brighter and cleverer students have all sorts of inside jokes based on the readings.
without wax, zarfkitty
DD12, 7th. Dx'd ADHD/GAD. No IQ test. EXPLORE & SAT just miss DYS but suspect HG+
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minniemarx,
That is a very important point about Cambridge and younger kids. Other points include a pretty authentic portrayal of 1st century wealthy Roman culture including slavery, paterfamilias, etc.
-zk
DD12, 7th. Dx'd ADHD/GAD. No IQ test. EXPLORE & SAT just miss DYS but suspect HG+
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I'm interested to hear your comments on LFA if you ebay for it... my brighter and cleverer students have all sorts of inside jokes based on the readings. Oh, now that sounds like what we did in class. We were writing stories about sailors and bad girls almost immediately. If I get it on eBay, it'll be purely for nostalgia. DD and I just checked out Minimus from the library and she's been having fun with it so far. I didn't realize how short it was, though--we'll definitely have to get something else soon.
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Joined: Mar 2010
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PowerSpeak12 has great Latin courses for K-12. The students seem to like these courses because they're like video games.
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We're going to try Word Roots for our DS6 starting in August, but I also have English From the Roots Up, and I like that approach too. Word Roots is labeled for 3rd/4th grade, but I think it looks pretty straightforward for a HG/PF younger child.
HS Mom to DYS6 and DS2
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