Latin study was a big part of my high school and college education. Years later I would still say that studying Latin contributed more to my intellectual development than any other part of my academic career. I know some people scoff at studying a dead language, but learning Latin was a very positive experience for me that served me well in so many areas. I wrote about some of these benefits here if you're still on the fence about whether Latin is right for your family.
I found Latin as a teenager, but I've been on the lookout for a way to gently introduce the language to my little ones. Memoria Press has been the perfect way to give them exposure to this worthwhile subject in a relatable and interesting way.
The Prima Latina (Complete Set) is designed for grades one through four, but I found it easily adaptable for use with my kindergartener and second grader. The set includes a teacher's manual, a consumable student workbook, a full set of flashcards covering all vocabulary, conjugations, and declensions, an audio CD for pronunciation practice, and a set of three DVDs containing 9 hours of instruction presented by the author, Leigh Lowe.
The course has 25 lessons and covers the Latin alphabet, 125 vocabulary words, counting up to ten, an awareness of English words derived from Latin, and basic grammar. This is exactly was I've been searching for, a gentle but substantive exposure to Latin that would leave my children with a positive taste in their mouths and hungry for more.
I found that presenting the material orally worked best for us. Each lesson contains some practical Latin expressions that my kids could integrate into daily conversation right away. They now love beginning each meal with “Oremus” ('Let us pray') before we say grace and shouting “Salve!” ('Hello!') to each other throughout the day. There are also a handful of vocabulary words to memorize, a prayer to practice, and some grammatical content to master.
It takes us about 20 minutes to go through a lesson orally as part of our regular Morning Time rotation. We are practicing each lesson until it is mastered completely which takes my kids about 2 weeks per lesson working with the material 4 times a week. At this rate we will finish Prima Latina in one to two years and then be ready to move on to Latina Christiana which is designed for grades 3 through 6.
I loved how our Latin lessons often stoked my children's curiosity about a particular word origin or subject of history, science or grammar. Prima Latina does a great job of showing how Latin relates to other disciplines, creating the kinds of cross-subject connections and deep conversations that I live for as a homeschool parent.
One of my favorite moments was watching my kids' eyes light up when we read in our history book that Christopher Columbus worked hard to learn Latin so that he could study navigation. “We're learning Latin just like Christopher Columbus!!” they shrieked.
We were also delighted to see lessons on the Latin names of constellations which integrated seamlessly with our current science topic – astronomy. Even though my children are still quite young for tackling a foreign language, Prima Latina made it easy for them to engage the subject in a meaningful way.
The audio CD made it easy to practice our Latin lessons on the go. Popping the CD in on a car ride was a fun way to bring our Latin learning along with us and squeeze in another review session. We didn't lean too heavily on the DVD lessons, but I can see how they would make an excellent resource for a parent-teacher who isn't familiar with Latin or for a student who is getting stuck on a concept.
Prima Latina makes Latin extremely accessible. You don't need any prior Latin knowledge to succeed with this program. In fact, you don't even need any knowledge of English grammar. My kids had a basic grasp of parts of speech like nouns, verbs, and pronouns, but even if your children haven't mastered these building blocks of language, they are thoroughly explained in Prima Latina. With this curriculum I could see some homeschoolers forgoing a separate grammar course and learning English grammar through the study of Latin.
If you favor more pencil and paper work, there are written exercises to accompany each lesson. For our particular family which includes a second grader who bursts into tears almost every time he has to pick up a pencil and a high-energy, short attention span kindergartner, I knew insisting on written work was not going to make for a pleasant Latin experience. But if I had older elementary students I would definitely use the written work to solidify their learning.
I was extremely pleased with our first experience using Memoria Press. I feel like the material would appeal to a wide variety of homeschoolers from classical to Charlotte Mason to eclectic. Memoria Press offers more than just Latin – you can find art, music, poetry, literature, penmanship, spelling, math, science, and even streaming online courses on their website.
If you'd like to see how other homeschoolers are using Memoria Press, connect with the Homeschool Review Crew or click the image below.
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