I am late to the party (as usual!) but Willa tipped me off to this. Jen Fulwiler is doing a 7 Posts in 7 Days thing. I guess it is to get over a late winter blogging slump? Anyway, I got the silly idea that I would do that too, so that I could talk about my latest preoccupation. This is a nerdy preoccupation with Latin textbooks.
First, it is important to reiterate that I am not a Latin scholar by any stretch of the imagination. I came to learning Latin very late when I was homeschooling my kids and my older ones were about 9 or 10. So that would be about 13 or 14 years ago. I was amazed, awed and intimidated by these homeschooling moms who were going to teach their kids Latin. I wanted to be as cool as they were so I signed on to the project by buying Latina Christiana. We got about two pages into the book and I realized I could never do this. And that was the end of that effort. For the time being. Then luckily I discovered there was this lovely homeschooling mom of many who taught Latin out of her home. Many kids that my oldest daughter knew would be enrolled in a class she was giving for 6th graders. I signed my daughter up. She enjoyed it the first two years but the last year she was too busying being an 8th grader. She was a bossy, know it all kind of girl that year (ahem!) and she rebelled by not doing her Latin homework. So that was the end of Latin for her. However, during that three year period, I helped a lot with her homework and I started to get a glimmer of what Latin was about, though it was still a deep, dark mystery too.
My struggle continued and it involved buying many different curricula and eventually enrolling in the lovely lady's classes myself along with my teenaged sons (at the time). I continue to try to learn Latin though at this current point in time it is more reviewing a lot of Latin that I have forgotten already because I took a couple year break in my own Latin education.
Being a curriculum junkie I have collected a lot of different materials for learning Latin. I have given a few away but for the most part I have kept them. I was recently reorganizing all my Latin books into one spot and that got me poring over them all and thinking about their various characteristics, etc.
I am just picking one random text that I think is a wonderful resource: The Phenomena of Language. I shrink from going to the Pearson website since I have been reading all sorts of articles that think Pearson is the spawn of the devil because of the bundle they are making off the whole common core debacle. Anyway, I bought this used from amazon (only two left in stock!) because Sean at the time was trying to get into a local classical school (which rejected him, grrr.) and we were trying to prepare him thinking he would indeed be accepted. This school uses The Phenomena of Language in the first semester of 7th grade and then begins with Ecce Romani after that. My copy is half written in but that's okay.
The Phenomena of Language is a workbook that introduces a middle school student to Latin. It goes very slowly and in terms of actual Latin learned, you don't get all that much. The books focuses on the first and second conjugations, explaining what 'cases' are, what tenses are and gives the student some basic vocabulary to work with. What is so charming about this book is that it is using Latin to basically explain how languages work. It unfolds the mysteries of grammar in a clear and thoughtful way. It also presents information about Latin history and culture in an amusing, light way; a way in which I don't think the student realizes the depth of what he is learning. It also teaches many Latin derivatives and goes into how these derivatives arrived in English.
The workbook is not intimidating at all. It has delightful cartoon illustrations sprinkled throughout. The layout is engaging. My one quibble is that throughout the book there are gray blocks imbedded in the pages that are meant to highlight important information. The pages almost but not quite have a xeroxed look to them. The gray in the boxes is too dark and doesn't differentiate enough with the printed words in them. It makes it hard to read. At least for my old, tired eyes.
I find this book so charming, I'll actually leaf through it at odd moments just for fun. Now that I have been helping out with the Certamen team for Aquinas Learning, I see that it is excellent preparation for that type of competition. In fact lately I've been daydreaming of using this book to teach a class to 5th through 8th graders at a local homeschool support program. I feel I could really teach this. I am not a Latin scholar at all, but I am pretty much an expert on introducing Latin to kids, since I have been engaged in that level of Latin for many years now.
I wish I could take my own kids through the book, but both are now too advanced grammar-wise for it in terms of knowing more than just two conjugations and that sort of thing. However, the depth of understanding this book conveys about how grammar works would be beneficial. I don't think my kids really have a strong grasp on that.
This book just isn't really talked about in homeschool circles. Maybe because it is too expensive? Maybe because it is hard to get through Pearson? I am not sure. But I do think it would be an excellent and charming way to begin Latin studies.
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