7 Posts in 7 Days (Latin Version) - Introducing Very Young Children to Latin

7 Posts in 7 Days is a series of blog posts inspired by Jen Fulwiler of Conversion Diary.  I started a day late though!

I have a passing familiarity with some programs designed to introduce very young children to Latin, but I have a very favorite one that practically no one has heard of.  I'll list all the ones I have encountered over the years.  By 'very young age,'  I mean preschool and up to 2nd grade or so.

Song School Latin - this one I am not so very familiar with. I am more familiar with Song School Greek (because I own SSG but never really used it! - did I tell you about my curriculum junkie habits???), however, I do have a little bit of knowledge about it mostly because it is used in Aquinas Learning and my daughter, who is teaching their preschool this year says it is a fun program that the kids love.  I think for the preschool set, they only use some of the songs and learn some of the vocabulary words.  My partially ignorant impression is that if you like a splashy program with a silly/funny monkey and canned music to help you learn some basic Latin - then this is for you!  I have no problem with making learning fun, but my own tastes don't run this way.  I can't stand canned music - and for some reason, even though this is for young children, I found the set up confusing.  But take anything I say with a grain of salt!  I have not actually used this program, so for all I know it might be just the ticket for you.

Getting Started With Latin - I have used this program and I love it.  It requires no prior knowledge of Latin and no prior preparation to teach it.  It is perfect for a parent and child to do together to learn very introductory Latin.  So if you don't know a lick of Latin yourself, you can learn right alongside your first grader.  You can pick it up and put it down when you like.  You can go through several lessons in one sitting or linger over a lesson for a couple days, if you like.  I did a review of it a couple years ago but I am too lazy at 6:12 a.m. to go looking for it on this blog.  This program does not have any whistles and bells.  Simple, straightforward and easy to use.  My advice is to have a whiteboard nearby so that you can write some of the patterns there and maybe answer some of the questions up on the whiteboard.  The parent could do the writing so that the child has some visual - or the child could, if they are old enough.  This program reminds me a little bit of First Language Lessons by Jessie Wise.  You sit next to your child and do one very short and simple lesson with him or her.  I used this with Becky and sometimes her concentration span was such that we could do a couple of lessons at one time, and sometimes her concentration span was such that we repeated one lesson a couple days in a row, just to make sure she got it.  Painless and solid.

Prima Latina - I bought this program and I don't know why.  Latina Christiana went over like a lead balloon around here.  We never really used it.  Slow, lots of writing for young children (2nd graders - my boys were very slow to develop handwriting skills) and, to us, dull as dishwater.  I bought it way back when before there was any audio-visual component.

Minimus - this is a clever program for very young elementary students.  It is expensive, takes a lot of teacher prep and I think really assumes you know some Latin already.  For a hands on teacher who knows what they are doing, this could be a good program.

I Speak Latin/Latine Loquor - this is an obscure program that was written by Andrew A. Campbell of Latin Centered Curriculum.  It is brilliant!  It is subtitled A Conversational Latin Course for Young Beginners.  This is for very young children - it could be used for those who are prewriting and pre-reading if you are just going to focus on understanding the spoken language.  It is completely scripted for the teacher along with very clear pronunciation guides for all new words.  Campbell himself suggests it for grades 2 and up.  Campbell builds slowly but it is amazing how much can be learned and just how much fun it is to learn spoken Latin in this way.  Really well done program.

I wrote the above list in no particular order.  As you can see, my two favorite resources are Getting Started with Latin and I Speak Latin/Latine Loquor.  My own children were late bloomers.  We didn't learn to read until 8 (girls) or 9 (boys) and they all needed vision therapy to help them along.  We had trouble with handwriting.  Yet I still wanted to introduce them to things that would typically be out of their reach at an early age, like Latin.  I didn't quite achieve what I wanted at an early age but I was on the lookout for programs that could do this.   I have a personal preference for programs that can be adapted as resources more than spelled out day by day lessons (though, both these programs are written out like that - but they are so simple and straight-forward they are very flexible).   I like things that take little to no prep.

Living Latin

If you are interested in unschooling Latin, one way to do this is to encounter it as a living language.  Every day Catholics around the world pray the Mass and the rosary in Latin!  This isn't as common as it used to be but Latin is definitely making a comeback in the Catholic Church.  It never died out entirely, of course, but there is a resurgence in interest in it.

Here are resources developed by my Latin teacher!  She's a lovely lady with years of homeschooling experience.  She does this in her spare time (which isn't much!).  These resources are really neat!  Check them out!