Co-schooling: Latin.

In one sense, I am no more qualified to teach Latin to my children and to two other families' children than any of the other parents in our circle. 

You might think my husband is the most qualified:  he took three years of Latin in high school, which is three years more than any of the others.  But since he remembers very little (odd bits surface from time to time, like the first two lines of the Lord's Prayer or witticisms like semper ubi sub ubi), 'twere foolhardy to put him in charge.

Or you might think Hannah is the most qualified, since (I think) she's the only one of us who studied two different foreign languages.

But in the end, it was me, and it was Latin. 

Why am I teaching Latin, and not French, in which I'm fairly fluent?  Because I already know French and I want to learn Latin.  When my kids learn a modern language, I hope it's Spanish (for utility in our neighborhood, city, and country) or Arabic (for cross-cultural and international utility), not the comparatively useless French, even though I love French and even though I owe my high school French teacher a major shout-out for teaching me how to learn a language down to the bones.  AND the nice thing about the classical languages is that curricula are available which assume the teacher has no prior knowledge of the subject.  Self-teaching curricula, you might say.  (Greek, Hebrew I think, and American Sign Language are others.)

A better question is why my friends are allowing me to teach Latin to their children.  Weeeeeelll, maybe they will pop in and comment in their own words, but I think it has a lot to do with the facts that (a) I was willing and (b) that's one less subject that they have to teach and (c) it's an elective at this stage anyway so even if I screwed it up completely, no matter.  I'm flattered that they trusted my abilities to do it. 

So I already had been teaching my then-8-y-o for a while from Memoria Press's Prima Latina and Latina Christiana I before the other kids joined, so he spent something like ten weeks on a side project of learning the Pater Noster and Ave Maria while Melissa's then-10yo daughter and Hannah's then-9yo son caught up to him in Latina Christiana.  That slight gap has been a little bit of a distraction since my son is eager to show off what he knows; eventually the other two got to the point where they were nearly as comfortable with the material as he, and then we could get down to business.  I started working with them regularly twice a week in a "group lesson."  The other two would do drill on some of the other days of the week at the discretion of their mothers. 

After the other two children caught up and I started teaching all three together, it became clear that we'd have to change the order in which we worked on the material.  The three-kid combination I was teaching needed to absorb the material in bigger, more uniform chunks:  so instead of learning, for example, a couple of first-declension nouns and a couple of second-declension nouns and a handful of verbs, and one grammar concept in one lesson, we would spend time on a group of first-declension nouns drawn from several lessons until they were all learned, and then some time on the second-declension nouns, and then the verbs, and so on.  After the vocabulary was mastered, I'd start introducing grammatical concepts and use the vocabulary to make sentences that illustrated them.  We slowed down considerably and I took the children completely off "Scheduled lessons," choosing instead to work on a set of vocabulary or a grammatical concept until mastery.  (Readers who use Latina Christiana will understand if I say that we worked on things at the level of the "Review Lesson" -- I would teach all the material in one review lesson at a time, in the order that made the most sense to me.)

As we went on I started inventing my own drill games on the fly.  We played charades a lot, and use the flash cards heavily.  I also discovered that the kids LOVE translating, probably more than any other activity.  This meant I had to come up with sentences using the vocabulary they have learned from their book.  What a fun challenge that has been.  I give them worksheets with five or six sentences to translate from English to Latin, and five or six to go the other way.  Sometimes I write silly sentences, sometimes serious ones.  Sometimes I try to ask questions and give them a chance to compose sentences of their own.  It takes a little time but it's one of my favorite school-prep tasks to do. 

Early on I stopped teaching the "Famous Men of Rome" history material (though I bought the books for our library) and I also haven't used the material on English words derived from Latin.  I can't figure out a natural, timesaving way to include material with such advanced vocabulary. We have limited time and we are doing different history stuff (although I think it could probably work really well, and save time, to use this curriculum for classical history too.)  I'm going to use a different word-roots program this year instead as a supplement.

Teaching Latin has freed me from feeling enslaved by the recommended teaching schedule of a curriculum.  This is the first time I have really taken a well-designed, purchased curriculum and completely changed it around to suit the needs of the children I was teaching.  I have bought Memoria Press's First Form Latin, and when we finish the material in Latina Christiana I we're going to switch over to that.  I think its approach, which is more rigorous-grammar based, will suit us all better.  But in between, I'm going to help the kids build their own Latin binder in which they keep lists and tables and grammar rules, which they can use for reference and continue building on as long as they continue studying Latin.

 

Comments

[Marybeth]

Like your husband, I had Latin in High School (2 years) and remember precious little.... Conall is doing Prima Latina right now and Freya is doing Latina Christiana 1 (They both watch the DVD's together, but I have them only doing work from their program... You'll have to let us know what you think of First Form once you have done it for awhile....

[Kelly]

Thanks, that is very helpful. Last year we just did the first 25 Roots Up cards, but this year I want to do all of Prima Latina with my 2nd and 4th grader. I live close to the Highlands Latin school (though not close enough to actually consider sending them), and I spoke to one of the Memoria Press women at a local conference. It has greatly inspired me to buckle down a bit more for this year.

[bearing]

FWIW, Prima Latina worked great with my workbook-loving oldest when he was in maybe 2nd grade. I wouldn't start PL before reaching reading fluency.

[Kelly]

My 2nd grader is reading Redwall, Percy Jackson, and other such series. A librarian tried to kick him out of the Young Adults section just last week.

(Isn't it annoying when you keep saying "It's okay" and the other adult refuses to accept that you can handle this parenting thing? It's not my fault they put the Redwall books in with the Twilight books.)

Now, I'm not sure he'll get all the grammer, but I think he'll do well enough that I'm going to try teaching them together. I believe they do Prima Latina at the Highland's School in 2nd grade.

[Rebekka]

Spanish I agree with you, but French is useless? And Arabic for international utility? I don't get it.

[bearing]

Rebekka, you live in Europe, if I recall correctly?

The average urban American encounters very few native French speakers in daily life. I can count the number of times I have run into a Francophone and struck up a conversation on one hand. And the Francophones in question all spoke perfect English.

On the other hand, the city block that I live on is populated by a MAJORITY of native Spanish speakers. Many of whom speak very little English. When I had to get comments from my neighbors in order to seek a zoning variance a few years ago, I had to draft a letter in two languages.

This is not an unusual situation in urban America.

It's a matter of *comparative* utility. (Note that I used the phrase "comparatively useless.") If I want to read existentialist philosophy in the original language, or work for the UN, sure, French is great. If I want my next-door neighbor to move his car so I can get out of my garage, I need Spanish.

[Tabitha]

We just finished Latina Christiana I and I was planning on moving on to Level II. Why are you switching to First Form Latin instead? I hadn't really thought of making a change and am curious as to the pros and cons (before I buy my stuff for next year!).

Also, a French question: My oldest daughter went to the Nat'l Spelling Bee this summer. She would like to continue in her spelling study and French is a huge issue. I took 3 years of High School German, Spanish isn't as much of an issue because of living in the desert SW. Do you have any thoughts on learning French for spelling English type purposes? She's not interested in speaking it at this point--Spanish is the language she needs to learn for speaking purposes. I've been at a loss on how to best help her with this aspect of language study.

Thanks!

[bearing]

First form Latin is arranged much more the way *I* would wish to learn Latin. It's grammar-centric. And it looks like the way this is working is that I'm learning a tidbit, then digesting it and passing it on to the kids. So it's going to work better if the material meshes with my brain. (Also, this is what Memoria Press's website seems to recommend for the age group I'm working with.)

Learning French just for spelling English... hm. I commend your daughter for her thoroughness. If she wants it just for spelling, then you would not need to study French *grammar,* but *vocabulary* and *pronunciation* could be helpful. Is there a roots program that has a big section on borrowings from French? Or find a long list of French words used in English, sort them out, and learn their etymology? Or attack it through a "history of the English language" study? My memory is that many of the Latin-rooted words in English come to us through the French -- so you could begin with the Latin roots and trace their path through French to English. These are just thoughts off the top of my head.

[Tabitha]

Vocabulary and pronunciation are what we are interested in. I have noticed that a lot of the Latin words came to us via French, but they change in their own French way. That's where I'm not sure how to help her. There are some etymology helps out there--the ones I've looked at (so far) are focused mostly on Latin and Greek, though. It's the French tendency to drop the ending of a word in pronunciation that really kills us--that dropped ending can be so many different combo's and my background doesn't help me in helping her decode it. I'll have to do some more searching on this front.

If you watched the Nat'l Spelling Bee Finals this year, the Canadian Speller ended up missing a French derived word because of the pronunciation. Once she heard the spelling, it was clear that she knew the word. Those things can't be completely prevented, but it's the sort of thing I'm hoping to give her depth in.

[Rebekka]

Yes, I live in Denmark. (I don't speak French, though. Or Spanish.)

I completely agree with you about the Spanish. (I'm originally from California.)

It just sounded very weird to me that you would consider French comparatively useless, and then throw Arabic into the mix for "international utility". I understand wanting to learn Arabic for cultural reasons, or if you have a burning desire to live/work in Northern Africa or the Middle East. But Arabic as a conversational language has actually a very small area of application. As far as international utility is concerned, after English of course, the large organizations will want you to know Spanish for the Western hemisphere and French for the Eastern.

[PNG]

Regarding that last post by Rebekka, I believe "bearing" is writing from the position of living in a place where there are several Somalian refugees. Although, Arabic is not their official language, many somalians speak Arabic for religion, education, and commerce. I also live in a place surrounded by an influx of somalians and arabs. There is an arabic school in my neighborhood. You'd be surprised how many somalians are coming from their country to here these days. We even have an offering in our community ed. brochure called, "Get to Know Your Muslim Neighbor"...go figure! The time is coming, since the school is in my neighborhood, when I just might have to know Arabic to get my neighbor to move his car.

[bearing]

PNG is correct. I am influenced by the demographics of the immigrant populations in my immediate neighborhood.