Teaching a foreign language to my children is simply not going to happen from my skill set.

We’ve played around a little with a program called DuoLingo that helps to teach Spanish, plus a handful of other languages you might prefer. The kids like it – it’s a free online program.  It’s just an introduction sort of situation, not a thorough education, but they enjoy acquiring a few words and I think it’s mildly helpful.

Although I’ve heard other parents sing the praises of having their children learn Latin, somehow it has never been on my radar.

But this year, after hearing positive reviews from several homeschooling friends, I decided to try a soft approach to learning Latin with the kids.

Visual Latin was recommended to us and we decided to just jump right in with their program.  It’s a video based program where the kids watch a video daily with an instructor on the screen and then they can complete optional worksheets.  This year I am having the entire family watch the video and only London is completing the worksheets.  Otto and Piper sit in for the video lessons and I’m sure some of it is just in one ear and out the other, but some of it is sticking and just hearing it is enough for me at their ages.

The instructor on the video is funny, even a little silly sometimes, and he happens to remind my family of a friend of ours, which we get a kick out of.  The worksheets are self-explanatory and London (ninth grade) has had no problem keeping up wth them herself.  (Which is important to me, of course.)

Because I have no real experience in Latin myself, I cannot speak to whether this program is more or less rigorous than any other program, but I’d say, if I was guessing, that it is less rigorous, but it is meeting the current needs of our family quite nicely.  And those current needs are – a basic introduction and understanding of Latin words and roots and meanings.  The kids are regularly telling me which words they recognize in other readings because of learning the Latin roots and suffixes and prefixes.  That’s a success right there to me.

I’ve put a link on the sidebar for you to check out Visual Latin yourself, and all of the curriculum at Compass.  They’ve been an easy company to work with.

I think Latin has value in learning and becoming familiar with because it is the root of not only English, but of so many other languages too.  The overlap is huge and as you learn new words and root meanings in Latin, you really do see a connection across the board.  I wish I had started inserting Latin into our homeschool curriculum at a much younger age, but I know that Otto and Piper will benefit from beginning now.  I’m also confident that the older kids will still have knowledge to gain to add to their broad base of information in languages.

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