Name: Spreading the Feast Gathering
Start: 2025-07-11T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-07-12T23:59:59-05:00
Location: LaGrange, KY

This topic has 10 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 8 months ago by Bookworm.

Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

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June 28, 2011 at 2:02 pm
MamaSnow
Participant
OK…a question for those of you who have chosen to teach Latin in your home: I am curious as to WHY you do it, What benefits you have actually seen in your children from doing it, and to what level of proficiency did you study it?   I’m not really interested in links to articles or anything as I’ve read numberous articles on it, I am more curious about people’s personal experiences with it. If you have done it and found it not really to be worthwhile I’d be intrested in knowing that too.   I had pretty much decided not to do Latin in favor of a moden language in the elementary years, but now revisiting that decision.   (We will still be doing a modern language but by immersion as opposed to formal study…we are fixing to move to a new location overseas.)
Thanks,
Jen
June 28, 2011 at 2:12 pm
the9clarks
Participant
We do Latin because it helps so much with vocabulary. Because of my Latin knowledge (which is not extensive), I can look at a word I’ve never seen before and have a pretty good idea what it means. Another reason my children are learning it is because Latin phrases are so frequently referred to in literature, including newspaper articles. Mea Culpa for instance. I would not have had any idea what that mean apart from Latin knowledge.

June 28, 2011 at 2:38 pm
Bookworm
Participant
We study Latin in our home. I expect all my children to complete four years of formal high school level curriculum. I expect them to achieve the level of translation of classic Latin literature. I do not begin teaching Latin until age 10 because I want them to understand what they are doing and not merely parrot chants. I’ve met many children who “know Latin” but this means they can sing-song declensions; if you ask them what they are doing or give them a sentence, they are bewildered.
We do this for many reasons:
Developing logical facility
Developing vocabulary
Deepening understanding of grammar
Learning elegance in language expression
Creating an orderly mind
Expanding memory capabilities
Base for learning other languages
Teaching attention to detail
Learning exactness and excellence
And lastly, better performance on standardized tests necessary here for higher education.
I know you said you didn’t want an article, but I think a MUST READ on this topic is Climbing Parnassus by Tracy Lee Simmons.
June 28, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Sara B.
Participant
We have considered it, but my kids are still very young (oldest is 8). The reason I am considering Latin is because my 2nd is so highly into science. She wants to be an astronaut some day (no joke!), and so as a scientist she will need to know Latin. So for sure by high school I will want her learning Latin, if not before, just for that. I’m not sure if the other kids would need to know it, but by then, I figure we’ll have some better ideas what they will want/need for more languages. For right now, we are sticking with Spanish, and in a couple years, we will add German.
June 28, 2011 at 4:59 pm
Christine Kaiser
Participant
I haven’t done Latin yet but plan to do it as the second foreign language because it is a very good foundation to learn any roman rooted language. It also helps in all areas of science.
June 29, 2011 at 7:21 pm
Bookworm
Participant
I just ran into an interesting free seminar. Thought I’d share the link. This is a seminar done by the Latin teacher (a homeschool mom) of Landry Academy, a program providing classes to homeschool students. Here is the website listing the free seminars:
http://landryacademy.com/rec.htm
It’s about a half an hour, and there is audio and also visuals. The title of the program is “Redux: Top Ten Reasons to be a Latin Geek”
June 29, 2011 at 9:08 pm
MamaSnow
Participant
Thanks, I appreciate the input all. Still undecided what we will do, but glad to hear of other’s experiences.
One question that came up when dh and I were discussing this (he’s even less convinced of the necessity of studying Latin than I am) was what does studying Latin give you that learning and studying the grammar of a modern language (we will be doing French) does not? Perhaps the seminar link that Bookworm shared addresses it…haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.   So if anyone wants to address that…I’m all ears!
So glad to have experienced people to discuss these things with!!
Jen
June 29, 2011 at 9:29 pm
Bookworm
Participant
Latin exercises a LOT more logic than French does (I speak both). I learned French first and then Latin, and I wish I’d learned more Latin earlier. Latin is a highly inflected language, French only somewhat inflected. This means that in French, for example, word meaning is conveyed also by position in sentence and some endings. In Latin, meaning is conveyed primarily by endings–many of them, which must be categorized and memorized, and which you must rely upon in unraveling long complex sentences. Learn to do that, and you’ll have a rigorous, well-organized, logical mind. Many sentences in classical Latin, for example Caesar’s writings, have all the verbs in the sentence at the END, and you have to slowly sort through the entire sentence to figure out what each of the five verbs goes with and how to make sense of the sentence. Once you learn to do this, there is NO sentence in English that will give you any trouble! Even those nice half-a-page eighteenth century ones. 🙂 Also, as you’ll note in the seminar link I sent, studying a foreign language is associated with higher than average SAT scores–but studying Latin is associated with the highest of all. In this day and age, that extra 150 points on the SAT could be the difference of thousands of dollars in scholarships–more than worth my investment in books and time to teach Latin. And I must say that this has been born out in my own family. My sons have always scored quite well on the Iowa tests–we have to test regularly here. But when I got my oldest son’s SAT results back, I was astounded–he did much, much better than I expected! I went over the results carefully and discovered that most of it was directly attributable to the vocabulary he’s gained by studying classic languages. Where he answered correctly questions that most students missed, they invariably had a difficult vocab word in it (he didn’t miss any questions on the verbal part.) I gave a rousing cheer for Latin that night! LOL

October 1, 2011 at 4:14 am
SueinMN
Participant
I took Latin in high school and it is the only course that is still benefitting me 40 years later.
October 1, 2011 at 1:15 pm
delaney
Participant
My oldest is a Jr in public HS and I am pleased to report that there is an AMAZING Latin teacher there. He is taking Latin 3 next term and has learned so much. Even he sees the value of it making it easier to decode words and learn other languages. I am doing Latin For Children with mine after a year of Prima Latina. They remember a lot and are so pleased when they come across a word that has Latin roots. It is the one piece of classical ed that I can’t let go of!
October 1, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Bookworm
Participant
You don’t have to–Charlotte’s students learned Latin. It’s not even a guilty pleasure–it’s one fully endorsed by Charlotte Mason herself.