I think the you learn best when you see and hear and work through a subject many ways, and from a variety of angles. Once is not enough. Definitely not for my kiddos, or f
or me either. And how that applies to learning a foreign language in a home setting can be a challenge, especially if it is a language you now must learn alongside your child (like Gaelic is in our family).
One of the most obvious choices when it comes to selecting a foreign language for your homeschooled-child to learn is Latin. Given that the Romans almost single-handedly crafted the cradle of Western Civilization, it makes so much sense to learn the language used at that time. And then there are all those pages and pages of Latin word roots as well as scientific and medical vocabulary your child will breeze through in the future if armed with a command of Latin. (And of course there are those lively Latin dinner conversations you can have over Sunday supper!)
There are many ways for kids to learn Latin. My least-fond memories of my middle school years are wound tightly with Henle and his Latin books. Of course, a large part of the trauma stemmed from a gaping hole in my English grammar education thanks to that wonderfully-progressive public school…
I realize that once my children are a bit older, Henle is the way to go. But for now we need something a little more nurturing and friendly.
Our primary text is “Latin’s Not So Tough” which is a great workbook-based series that takes kids from a very young age to teenage-hood through ‘A-Page-A-Day’ format with accompanying flashcard work. The end goal is to be able to read classics such as the Aeneid in the native language. This program is wonderful but for us lacks a strong audial component (as an aside, we also really like the “Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek” books produced by the same company and use them side by side).
As a complement, we use Byki (a great free downloadable program that allows kids and their adults to learn a huge range of languages using a computer-based visual and audial flashcard system) and we recently found a great online world called Headventure Land (a really fun and free online environment to assist children in learning classical subjects like Latin, Greek, and the Bible).
And so we come back to loops. By looping through a variety of approaches to Latin, the language and it’s complexities (which is easy for my kiddos as they are homeschooled and actually learned grammar) is approachable and fun. My daughter recently asked for a full Latin-English dictionary so she can start writing her stories in Latin as well as English (a quiet activity she engages in during breaks and in the evenings on the condition that I never read her burgeoning stack of tales and mysteries). Yet another loop emerges… and so our adventure in Latin continues.
