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spanish or latin?
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I have a 3rd grader, K, preschooler and baby. I have “tried” to teach spanish to them, but all the curriculums were too pricey so I’ve been kinda winging it. And I don’t speak spanish myself! I have been looking into “Getting Started with Spanish.” It seems like something they would enjoy! I also see that there is a “Getting Started with Latin.” I am also interested in teaching the kids latin. So if I were going to buy a book and start one, which one should I do first? And how long before starting another one?
I should add that we live in an area where many speak spanish. I am also interested in Hebrew and/or Greek for value in reading the Scriptures. So hard to decide!
we will probably do both. With that said Latin will be part of language arts, not foreign language. So if it were me I would start with Spanish.
We currently are doing spanish. It is very common where we live and while I don’t expect really fluent (since we do not speak it at home) I really hope they will have some conversational Spanish to help communicate.
We do not do Latin though. I did it growing up in late middle school (I was HS’ed) and did not find it helpful, maybe what we used? Not sure *blush*
If we did I would put Latin in the LA group and Spanish in foreign language group.
Maybe in the future we might try Latin, but not sure yet. Spanish is going well since it is heard often when we are out and about, so I am going with Spanish for a while before adding to it.
I’d also lean toward Spanish. Latin programs tend to be more grammar focused (although that isn’t always the case). I also think it’d be nice since you live in a Spanish-speaking area. Our town has a large Mexican population, and it’s fun to listen (or look) for words they know at the Mexican market.
Not sure if it’s what you are looking for but this year we are doing the Salsa Spanish video series by Georgia Public Broadcasting . Salsa is the name of the little cartoon lizard/gecko animal. It is free and online!! If I understand correctly it was made in Georgia for the public school system but now is free and accessible. The episodes are linked on the left hand side , click on that and it will take you to the list of episodes. Start with episode #101 and go up from there.
There is a scope and sequence on the website that I printed out. It goes over the synopses of each episode and the new vocab and well as the learning objective. We simply watch a new video ( following the order ) once a week and then throughout the week practice any new vocal and review from previous weeks.
The episodes are all in spanish so it’s immersion to some extent. My kids have to really pay attention to what is being said and I can tell that they have been learning from this little video series.
Again , not sure if this is something you may be looking for . You might want to at least check it out. Having it free helped with our budget until we can afford a more extensive spanish curriculum.
Jamie
Thanks for all the thoughts. I talked to DH and he wants to do spanish and save latin for later. I remembered about Salsa spanish last night (we had watched a few episodes a year or two back) and we watched episode 101 this morning. They loved it! I guess I am wanting something a little more systematic and less “fly by the seat of your pants.” Right now I have some spanish christian cds. We also have listened to some youtube videos for things like body parts, animals, months, etc. I also downloaded a bingo-type game to learn some new vocabulary. So I am thinking if we take 2 days to watch the Salsa video, one day to play a game, and 1-2 days to watch some kids immersion videos, that will be good? Then each day we can listen to the song until we learn it, and talk about the calendar. Is it also useful to get the Getting Started with Spanish book, or is that overkill?
Also curious why people put latin as a part of LA?
I took years of Latin in high school (planned medical school) and I’m SO GLAD I did! The English language is based on Latin (and other languages) and vocabulary becomes such a simple process. My kids will come with a word they don’t know and if I don’t know it, I’ll say something like, “Its prefix means —- and its root means —-… Does that help with the contextual meaning of the sentence?” …and it usually does. We often look up words to be certain but it makes upper level reading less cumbersome. My 3 older children (attend a classical high school) all took/are taking 4 years of Latin. The oldest attends college and wants to teach upper level chemistry and physics. He’s so glad he took Latin (though perhaps not as glad when he was in the midst of it). That being said… we didn’t learn Latin prior to high school. We have 8 children and the young ones are learning Spanish at home and will learn Latin in high school. It’s fun to use a language you can speak! It’s fantastic to learn a language you can use!
I put latin with LA vs Foreign Language because people do not speak Latin. It is great as poster mentioned above for vocab and it can be helpful especially in certain sciences. Latin to me is more of word study and I see foreign language as language used to speak with.
But that us just my thinking right now, who kniws how it will change 🙂
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