Have you heard the saying,” Latin is dead because the Romans killed it.”? If I had a nickle every time I heard it in school, I could buy a dinner at a decent restaurant.
What It Is
Karen Moore and Gaylan DuBose have written a Latin program geared towards upper level students (7th grade and up). They wanted the program to be:
Classical & Creative
Relevance & Purpose of Latin
Clear, Incremental & Easy to use
Latin Alive book 1 is the first in a three book series aimed to teach upper level students Latin. The goal is for the students to learn without being bored to death or have so many activities that they never seem to really learn Latin. Some of the ways the writers of Latin Alive! show that Latin isn’t dead, but a part of us, are found in most of the chapters and includes:
State seal – study of the Latin state seals
Latin & Science
Cultural Corner- delves a little deeper into Roman life
Derivative detective-Shows where some of our English words come from
Game ideas
Moore & Dubose have a combined 50 years in teaching Latin.
We received Latin Alive! book 1 bundle set which included the student book, Teacher’s book, and the best part- a DVD& CD set containing video of Ms. Moore teaching all the lessons. The DVD contains 16 hours of instruction!
36 weekly chapters:
29 content chapters
7 review chapters
The Student will learn the following in Book 1:
5 noun declinations
verb conjugations
introduction to irregular verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, & prepositions.
What We Did
I was/ am / will probably always have difficulty pronouncing other languages- something to do with a communication problem between my ears and brain (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it : ) ). The DVD’s are for those who are new to Latin, or for those who are so talented that they can murder a dead language-haha. Karen Moore came into our home, via the DVD, and began teaching my two children a language that they had heard so many bad things about. I loved Latin in school because it wasn’t a spoken language and was a great puzzle. I loved the challenge of figuring out a translation because in Latin, word order isn’t as important as in English.
My children would watch the video and then do the activities. When we first started we did a little bit each day, but March became a month to prepare for a wedding and dehydrate tons of food. The children could help out some, but much of the time I was busy and they needed something to do that didn’t require me right there supervising every minute. One of the things I had them do was 2 Latin chapters a week.
We had 2 students and 1 student book, so we had both children do the work in a spiral notebook. For the regular chapter work, writing in the notebook actually made sense. The tests were just a tad more difficult, but since a lot it was multiple choice, the children were able to write down the letter and got to bypass writing out the entire sentence. There isn’t a lot of room to write in the book for the exercises and you will need a separate notebook for the extra activities anyway.
What We Thought
We liked it extremely well. The children would actually smile and not complain about Latin. The cherubs have smiled and not complained about other things, but they usually involve a computer and games (we just found the online games for Latin Alive and of course they like that also). Both children liked the Chapter Readings. They thought the readings were interesting and a way to practice what they learned.
My daughter said she like the Readings “even though I sometimes have problems because I don’t know what a certain word means. I can’t find it in the list (usually my error because it looks slightly different.” She also likes the tips that Ms. Moore gives as she teaches.
My son enjoyed the study of the state seals. he likes learning tidbits of information.
I am more easily irritated by people’s voices and mannerisms than I would like to be. Consequently, I end up listening to half the videos because I have trouble watching all the quirks, but Ms Moore is a joy to watch. She’s not a boring old professor, but she isn’t some teenager that has had way too much coffee. She’s intelligent without being condescending, upbeat without wanting to tell her to lay off the caffeine, and makes Latin fun without making it like a circus.
The cost for this bundle is $139.95 which is more than we usually spend for a one year curriculum, but we plan on using it and thee two following levels during the children’s high school years. This is well worth the cost to us because Latin Alive was done so well, there is no way I could come close to teaching them a fraction of what they are learning from Latin Alive! I’m a craft-a-holic, but I would be willing to give up several months of budgeted craft money to buy this curriculum!
To see what other crew members had to say about Latin Alive! and other Latin programs from Classical Academic Press, click here.
There are two additional resources available to aid in retaining knowledge in a fun manner: Headventureland.com and LatinAliveOnline.com- both are free. Samples of the program are available from Classical Academic Press.
As a member of the TOS Review Crew, I received this product free, in return for my honest OPINION.
I am a Jane of all crafts, master of none,
Homeschool my children, a daughter and son.
Been married to my sweetheart for 19 years
filled with joy, frowns and happy tears.
I don’t always have it all together,
But with God’s help, I’ll get better.
I’m no expert, and all I can do,
is to say how it works for us and share it in a review.
No Comments »
Filed under: Uncategorized
KLM