Latin Everywhere, Everyday: A Timberdoodle Review

First, can we all just agree that it’s a ludicrous system we’ve all created and sustained that we should think about or plan for the NEXT year of homeschool during the months of January or February?

Those are the exact months where I want to quite EVERYTHING.  At least one day in February my brain literally rebels and I question my sanity and why I ever boarded the homeschooling ship to begin with.

(I like to start off my reviews with a real boost of positivity and encouragement.  It’s my love language.)

Alright, so we know it’s difficult to think about the next year while we’re drowning in the dregs of this year.

This post maybe will help you out a wee bit.  Or maybe you’ll need to earmark it to read in March.  Whatever works.  I’m not the judge of you.

If you are a Classical homeschooler – which I am not – then you already believe Latin to be essential to your child’s education.  If you are a Charlotte Mason homeschooler – which I am – then you believe Latin has a role to play.   (You’ll find a wide variety of levels of affection and disdain for Latin throughout homeschool in general.)

Listen, land wherever you want to land on the Latin debate.

At first, I didn’t have space to think about Latin at all.  Riley’s education hardly had an inkling of it.  Then, I thought of it but feared it and let myself be intimidated by it.

Then, I grew to believe in its value half heartedly and added it to the line up using Visual Latin.  Visual Latin was a good fit for us for a season.  

When our video course finished with Visual Latin and it was time to decide whether to dive in deeper or to go in another direction, I landed on a different direction.

For many reasons.

One of which is – the kids were losing interest in the videos.  They were fooling around when they were on.  I was disengaged with the videos myself at that point and I was never really aware of what they were learning because I was using the video time to do other work.

Plus, I’m not sure my kids will ever be conjugating Latin verbs and diagramming Latin sentences.  And – I don’t care if they are.

(Obviously it’s fine if YOU do care.  You have my permission to care passionately and deeply about Latin.  I do not have to join you to be your friend.)

What I’d really like from a Latin education is for my kids to recognize common Latin terms.  E pluribus unum.  (On our currency.)  Ad lib. Ad nauseam. Ad hoc. And so on.  Ad infinitum.

What I would also really like from a Latin education is for me to be able to be engaged with my kids on the topic without spending loads of (read:none) extra time acquiring the knowledge beforehand.

Another thing I’d like from a Latin education is to be able to do this with all five of my children at the same time.  A feat growing increasingly difficult as they get older.

(We don’t have many group study subjects any longer.  Which is something I  mourn weekly.  But it is where I am.)

Latin Everywhere, Everyday is a simple and straightforward workbook.  You learn a Latin phrase or a Latin word every day.  (Or every day you do Latin together.) 

After you learn five words or five phrases, there is a quiz.  After ten or so quizzes, there is a test or another review sheet.

If you order the teacher’s manual, which you likely should, you get an audio cd so you can guarantee you are saying the words accurately.  There are also answer keys in there as well – although the answers aren’t too tricky if you’re following along.  You could technically get by without the teacher’s manual.  You can always google how to pronounce the phrases accurately.

If you are going to let your child work independently in this workbook, which you totally could, then the answer guide would be more valuable.

What we’ve been doing is going over the words as a family.  I am making the kids each create an index card with the Latin phrase on one side and the definition on the opposite side.  We do a brief verbal quiz every day before we learn a new word.  

Already I hear my kids saying, “Oh – that word makes sense now.  I’ve heard infinity and that is like ad infinitum.”

I like the simplicity and the straight forwardness of the program.  I like that the expectations are regular and attainable, but also really effective.  (Simple should never be a curse word.)

You can order Latin Everywhere, Everyday on the Timberdoodle website.

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