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Latin? Should we?
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I’ve never studied latin — and never thought there would be much benefit in learning it. I figured we’d be lucky if we learned french and maybe sign-language. But now I wonder if maybe latin would be beneficial, after all, if it makes learning other languages easier. While it is difficult to predict what career choices my children will make in eight to twelve years, or what role if any, learning latin might play in that, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to investigate the matter.
So, for those of you studying Latin: What age did you start with your child(ren)? What is their opinion of it? Easy? Hard? Fun? Boring? What resources can you recommend? How long have you been doing Latin? How long to plan to continue using Latin? How much time do you spend studying Latin per day? What made you decide to study Latin with your children? What benefit are you seeing? Hope to see? For those of you who stopped doing Latin, why? Is there a situation where you would consider resuming?
I don’t want to exasperate my children by insisting on dull learning that they will never use. English grammar and spelling can be bad enough as it is, but it is necessary. Latin isn’t necessary, but neither is any other foreign language or poetry or composer or picture study, but it has been shown to have some mertit to include these things.
We start at 10-11. We’ve been doing this for 8 years. We will do four years high school level work, and then my oldest wants to continue to work on translation (I’m giving them all the option of doing this.) We spend about 20-30 minutes a day depending on age. My children LOVE Latin–they believe it is not always easy but always worth it. I use Latin in the Christian Trivium books; in addition to this, for a gentler start for my youngest we began with Getting Started with Latin and liked it very much. Our children have learned so much! Their English has improved; their writing has improved; their grammar knowledge has skyrocketed; their vocabularies are rich (and this has blessed us TREMENDOUSLY in college entrance exams!!!!!) they have been able to make links between the other languages we study (French, Spanish and even German) their reasoning ability and mental organization are much, much more acute, their attention to detail has grown more than I can describe, and they delight in issues relating to language, words, etc. in a way few other people I know do. (You should hear the punfests we have in our house!) My oldest son scored a perfect score on his verbal SAT and he says he owes most of that to Latin. He intends to continue study of it in college. Our other sons may not go that long, I don’t know yet. We have been so blessed because we chose to do a hard thing and studied Latin. I can’t recommend it any more highly. If you teach Latin, you can totally dispense with teaching separate vocabulary, and your English grammar load goes down SIGNIFICANTLY. Spelling has improved. . The time spent carries over so well, that I think we’ve saved ourselves an hour of other work a day in that thirty minutes of work a day, and it’s been a delight.
Bookworm or anyone: Any thoughts on Visual Latin?
I figure to start my kids around age 9 or 10… not 100% sure.
Just thought I’d add a possible benefit rarely mentioned….
If they ever get into genealogy (family history) – it can really help with reading old records. Many geneaology records (like baptisms and weddings) were recorded in many countries in Latin just a couple of hundred years ago.
As there are different declinations (kind of like verb tenses but for nouns) even for proper names – it can help you figure out the real name, as well as what was being said. I don’t know latin, and I don’t have my “cheat sheet” to give an example – but I know one of the declinations means possesive so you might have a record that in English would read something like Frank, child of John – but it would look more like (in English) Frank John’s child – and people who don’t know about this might write the person’s name as Frank John’s instead of realizing there are 2 people, one calle Frank, and one called John (And not John’s)
Anyway – hope that gives another little reason.
Jenn, I’d never seen this before. It does look like fun. I might suggest considering also a basic book to go along WITH it as I’m slightly concerned that they seem to think memorizing declensions is “boring” We don’t think so, and it is CRUCIAL if you want to understand the language. I like the Lingua Latina that they suggest to go along with it, but I wouldn’t use LL with very young children, and there is an issue there with there being enough help for a parent who does not know Latin well in this curriculum. There was at one point a homeschool supplement in the works but I do not know if they ever came out with it; I can’t find one on Amazon.
Darn it, Bookworm. My husband and I just discussed Latin on Saturday during a long road trip and he said he didn’t think it was necessary. I just sent him an email with your glowing recommendation….I know many of your arguments will hit home because those things (grammar, vocab, writing, etc) are very important to him. We’ll see what happens. If I come crying back here in a day or two looking for curriculum help just know it’s your fault.
Heather
We did about 15 lessons of Latina Christiana. I have to say it was torturous for us. The boys were 10 and 12. We had a hard time sticking to it, took us 3/4 a year to get that far! I absolutely LOVE the idea of Latin and the help it is to vocabulary. I’m not new to Latin. I took 2 years of it in high school! Did we just pick the wrong curriculum? Is there one that mainly allows you to learn it from a vocabulary stance?
I’ve never tried Latina Christiana. What I ended up looking for was a product that involved the children immediately in reading and storyline, but ALSO had the necessary memorization. IMO it is the combination of both that made this workable. So I went looking for things that had both components, and found LitCT. We’ve loved it. The storyline (fictional) is about a family in Roman times that goes to Palestine and ends up meeting Jesus. There is also the memory work, but each chapter consists of both reading AND memorizing the necessary forms. As reading level progresses, the student goes on to read Bible stories in Latin translation, and then on to Caesar, other Roman authors, and poets. There is PLENTY of help for the parent teacher and the authors even answer questions sent to them through the website. So it worked very well for us.
If you want to learn just solely from vocab, the only product I’ve personally used like that is Latin’s Not So Tough, but we HATED it. We just learned disconnected words while not learning declensions and forms, and nothing to DO with them like read a story. IT was torture for us and we stayed with it only one year, moving on immediately to LitCT.
Sorry, Heather, you can blame me fully though. LOL So if you get something and the boys hate it you can blame it on Bookworm. I always tell my kids my shoulders are big enough to take it so if ever they’re in an uncomfy situation, they can just say “My mom would kill me” and give me a call and it’ll be OK. LOL
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that one. I am definitely going to check it out! I do want them to learn Latin. My Dh is a dr and he took Latin in hs too. He attests to how much it helped him in med school! Thanks!
Latin in the Christian Trivium sounds really good Bookworm! We are doing the SCM Jesus study this year and that sounds like it might be a nice tie in.
Hi, my name is Heather and I want to be just like Bookworm. Whatever she teaches, I want to teach too.
So, the husband says, “I think it’s a good idea. Give me a price.” I also need to figure out how often (times per week) and for how long each day.
That being said…..I have 2 11-year-olds and a 7-yr-old (who will probably sit in with us, but won’t need to do all the work – same with the 5-yr-old). Would you suggest we start with Getting Started with Latin and once finished move to LitCT OR work on them both at the same time….or start Getting Started and move into LitCT halfway through…..HELP!!!!
Thanks for the product reviews – I never would have known where to start. By the time we’re done in this family we’ll be speaking and reading all sorts of ancient languages – husband is a Hebrew linguist and kids are learning, he’s teaching himself Greek and now we’re thinking of Latin – anything else????
Is the Latin in the CT a workbook? I see a student edition and a teacher edition. Is it a write in book? I see where it talks about making a notebook for it.
Thanks!
Hi! There is a student book–each student will need one. This one is NOT write-in, but there are a few maps that are directed to be colored. (We are re-using them between my two “generations” of Latin learners.) You only need one teacher book. The students do make a notebook. There is also a write-in book with a study sheet and a drill sheet for each unit. You may need to check with the publisher–the first time we ordered these, these were a spiral-bound booklet. We bought one and printed off sheets to make enough for everyone. It was copyrighted to make this possible, which I appreciated. But the last volume, the newest one, came instead with a CD with those items on it to print off. I don’t know if they are eventually moving to all-CD or not. But you’d want to ask about that when you called to order. There is also an optional pronunciation CD (my kids think the guy in the CD is hilarious, and they walk around talking like him, lol) and an optional book of extra activities like games and logic puzzles. If you call and talk to the people, they will help you get each item you need–they are VERY helpful. One year I was really financially pressed and called them and ordered damaged copies to save money, and didn’t order any extras, and when I opened my box it contained a pronunciation CD anyway–they just decided to bless me with it. I’m pretty sure I cried. It was just a nice touch. These are good people.
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