Our homeschool is very eclectic – meaning we use bits and pieces from various methods in our course of study. We lean heavily towards Classical, Charlotte Mason, and Unit Studies to keep things interesting. One aspect of Classical education I really love is the instruction of Latin as a foundation to strengthen the student’s vocabulary, grammar, and critical thinking skills. When we received the complete set of Latina Christiana from Memoria Press, both I and my son were ecstatic!
We received the complete set of the Latina Christiana program which includes everything you need to teach Latin to one student for an entire school-year:
- consumable Student Book (25 lessons + 5 review lessons)
- Teacher’s Manual (spiral bound)
- Pronunciation CD
- Flashcards set
- Instructional DVD set
- Quizzes & Tests (pdf download)
- Vocabulary & Grammar Drill pages (pdf download)
Latina Christiana is a beginning course for students of all ages (who are reading and writing with ease) and was specifically written for the teacher with no previous latin experience. This program is very thorough and covers pronunciation, spelling, and translation of approximately 200 latin words, 25 latin sayings, 2 prayers, and 3 songs. Your student will learn latin nouns, verbs, and adjectives, along with how to conjugate those verbs and decline nouns and adjectives. They will learn the singular and plural forms of the nouns they are taught and how to complete latin sentences with subject/verb agreement and adjective/noun agreement. They will learn english derivatives of each latin word, increasing their understanding of both latin and english vocabulary. Latina Christiana also includes an optional history component covering the Roman empire.
Our experience with Latina Christiana…
I had attempted years ago to implement a latin program when my older children were in elementary with very little success. To this day, I am not sure if the issue was that memorization and foreign language did not come easily to them, or that the program we used wasn’t a good fit. Whatever the reason, we quit after a semester and never picked it back up.
Before beginning our study, we spent a lot of time discussing why it was beneficial for him to learn latin when it is a “dead language” and how it will enable him to more easily learn other latin-based languages in the future as he also wants to learn spanish. He has found it very interesting how many english words come from latin roots which has really increased his english vocaluary.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Joey (10yo) not only enjoyed learning latin, but showed an aptitude for memorization and foreign languages! He now can translate and pronounce over 50 latin words and is able to easily decline 1st declension nouns and conjugate verbs in the present tense 1st conjugation. All this after only five weeks of latin study!
We have adopted the following schedule using Latina Christiana which works great for us:
Day 1 – Watch DVD and complete Lesson exercises in student book (45 mins)
Day 2 – review new vocabulary using flashcards and practice pronunciation using CD (10-15 mins)
Day 3 – review new and previously learned vocabulary using flashcards and complete vocabulary and grammar drill worksheet (15-20 mins)
Day 4 – take quiz or test (15-20 mins)
Why we love it…
As a busy homeschooling momma, I love how the DVD set allows my son to work through the lessons independently and how user-friendly this homeschool latin program is as a whole. I am shocked at how much material he is able to absorb, in spite of the lessons being short and simple! The way the material is presented makes it easy for him to learn and he doesn’t feel overwhelmed. There is enough grammar in the program to foster understanding of the inner workings of the latin language without being overly technical or frustrating, which is something I’ve seen with other homeschool latin curricula. I can’t really think of one specific thing we don’t like about Latina Christiana! We genuinely love using this homeschool latin program and plan on continuing into First Form Latin once we are finished with this book.
Make sure to head on over to the Review Crew blog to read more reviews of this and other curriculum from Memoria Press!
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