Hits and misses

LATIN: HIT

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One of our big curriculum additions this year was Prima Latina, an elementary Latin program. I've wanted to incorporate Latin into our school for several years, but each time I would look at the popular Latin choices, I would be horribly discouraged by the teacher's books.

Holly received Spanish instruction in ps kindergarten and first grade (until we withdrew half way through). She also received it twice a week during second and third grade when she attended the cottage school. After 3.5 years of Spanish, which included weekly homework, and in which she did "well," she could count to 100 and name about 40 nouns. It was a colossal waste of classroom time.

I would still occasionally check out those homeschool Latin programs and be embarrassed that I just could not do it.

We began a formal Spanish curriculum at home during fourth grade. My thought was that Holly had enough exposure to it, and it wouldn't be too hard to maintain it. It went pretty well. Trevor participated too, and the kids learned quite a bit that first year. It was for older kids and after the first year, Trevor began to lag. Holly was bored.

After being fed up with having Spanish crammed down my throat on telephone customer service recording hell, on forms that I have to fill out, on food packaging, on signs at Home Depot, and more, I rebelled and said NO MORE SPANISH. (Actually, there's a whole lot more to my rebellion, including the fact that Denver is a sanctuary city, with our COUNTRY not far behind, but I digress.)

Breathing deep.

But I prefer my children learn Hindi and Chinese before Spanish.

So why would anyone want to teach Latin? It's surprisingly popular for several reasons. It's not a spoken language, so pronunciation isn't as crucial as other languages. It goes a long way in understanding our English language, as more than 60% of our language has Latin roots. French, Italian and Spanish are all rooted in Latin, so students make the transition to those languages much more easily.

There's also the grammar connection. The ending of a word indicates that the word is a subject, indirect object, etc. When I teach Latin, it's not necessary for me to use a formal grammar curriculum at the same time. In fact, it's only in the past 100 years or so that students have NOT been taught Latin. (No, Dad, I don't mean that you're over 100!)

I bought Rummy Roots, and we began learning Latin roots with a card game similar to Go Fish. (Hey, it worked!) But it wasn't enough to satisfy my desire to really DO Latin.

I sought advice from my wonderful local homeschool bookstore lady, who has a great love for Latin, followed closely by classical eduction as a whole. I ended up bringing home Prima Latina. Sure, it's written for K-3rd grade. But I didn't choose that level for my kids. I chose it because it was easy enough for ME to teach.

Even so, after the first few weeks, Holly and Trevor completely surpassed me. This past year, they've learned 125 vocabulary words, constellations, numbers, and more. (I didn't learn all of these, but I now am even more assured that I don't have to know something to teach it well.) They've been introduced to declensions and conjugations. (Those words made my head swim, so I just ignored that I don't quite "get" this yet.) Holly finds Latin fun. Trevor talks about it frequently, looking for connections with English words, sometimes muttering in Latin that we've learned. As for me, I continue to recite Latin roots from the dictionary.

After studying Julius Caesar for the past few weeks, I enthusiastically told Trevor yesterday, "When you are in high school and can read Latin, you can read Caesar's book The Gallic Wars IN LATIN!" He wasn't quite as enthusiastic as I was . . . Perhaps I should have instead mentioned Dr. Seuss's Cattus Petasatus or Virent Ova! Viret Perna! Yes, even The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham are now available in Latin--along with Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit--How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Meanwhile, I have time. I'm looking forward to teaching a more grade appropriate Latin curriculum next year. I just hope I can keep up, at least a little.