Learning Latin at home - a good idea?

[whistlerx]

My dd is bored at school, not being challenged much. She's bright, and linguistic. I'm wondering about her doing a correspondence course in Latin (IGCSE). Has anybody tried to do Latin with their dc? I'm wondering whether it's a good one to do. They don't do it at school, so would mean no conflict with school, which is a pro. But how hard is it?

It's a pretty hard language - I'd say harder than Spanish, but easier than (say) mandarin or Arabic.

Obviously Alphabet is the same plus if she has a decent vocabulary in English she'll be able to guess at a lot of the meanings.

Not sure it's much use though tbh. Is she likely to want to study history or classics at degree level? If not there's not that much point and a modern language would be more useful.

I think the only available IGCSE correspondence course is over £500 and it does look quite meaty. I think she'd have to be quite dedicated.

Why not try it first a hobby first? Minimus or Cambridge are good resources.

I wonder whether history would be a better choice. The Cambridge course covers Chinese 20th century history, which would be v interesting. Do any of your children do history by correspondence course?

If my DC is not offered Latin at school, I will attempt to teach them at home. I found it so useful for other subjects. I found it much easier and much more interesting than modern languages, which I struggled with. Have a look at the Cambridge Latin course. It has great characters and great stories!

I'd say try getting in touch with your local university or the classics society. They are so keen to get students interested in Latin they might be able to offer some support. We had a few students at school doing self study using the Cambridge course supported by a finalist once a month which was a really good arrangement.

My daughter used www.livelylatin.com/ways-to-learn-with-livelylatin-2/independent-student-or-family-study/ followed by a Galore Park textbook and some help from a tutor for the last few months before the exam to work on exam technique and boost her confidence. She enjoyed using Lively Latin a lot and I'd say it's particularly good for independent study, whereas other textbooks assume you'll have a teacher.

I can't comment on the home ed aspect, so don't know if you will need to use a specialist tutor, but I learnt Latin at school (state school, 'O' level, 30 years ago- we used Cambridge Latin as well) and I learnt lots about grammar and sentence construction from studying it. It's a relatively logical language and it has been helpful to me since when learning modern foreign languages, we also studied lots of interesting related historical things, like how the Roman aquaduct systems were developed, as they became relevant to the stories. We studied some set texts from the time, which was amazing. The other good thing was we didn't have to be able to speak it for the exams as it is not a spoken language anymore. I would love my DCs to have the chance to learn it. Truly an education in the true sense of the word.

I think it should be doable. Definite advantage in no oral skills required.

How long did it take your child to study to gcse level, eg roughly how many hours of study?

Hi whistlers,
I taught my son Latin at home and he has just done his GCSE papers. I used Galore Park books such as So You Really Want to Learn Latin and Latin Practice Exercises which were totally brilliant. You could certainly teach your child yourself as it is so self evident and well explained and you need only keep a few chapters ahead of her. I had done Latin to O level but ages ago and not enjoyed it. But I have loved these modern books and so has my son.

For the exam there were five possible papers this year. But this is changing I believe so look up the OCR website and find out what the new papers are like.
The hardest bit to manage on our own was the Set Books (he did part of the Aeneid as poetry and Pliny and Tacitus as prose. He really enjoyed the prose but never wants to see the Aeneid again. The language papers were a doddle.

Time wise, we did start him off quite young (nine) so he's been doing it a long time. He had a period in school where he learnt Latin in class and was streets ahead of his classmates which he found very frustrating. He won the Classics prize at the end of term. For the language papers, he could have done them several years ago, but we didn't put him in early as there were the prose and poetry ones to do too. You could opt for a totally in English paper about Roman life etc with the present exam system. I don't know if this still exists from next year.
Supposedly a GCSE takes 140 hours of learning, but I guess the more you do the better you get.
There are lots of online helpful sites (we found a load for the set books) some of which are free and some of which sell you the help. We used a mixture of both.
Usefulness - if you have a Latin GCSE it shows you are bright and can work hard and learn things off by heart (conjugations and declensions and grammar rules). It teaches you excellent grammar skills so spills over into your written and spoken English plus helps you with other languages. It is worth doing it just for the sake of it really.
My son would ideally have liked to go on and do A level but he's going back to school and they don't offer it. I think he likes the fact there are so many rules to obey.
Give it a go. But use Galore Park especially the Practice Exercises books which also have explanations and start very simply.

Pps have suggested resources already, I just came on to say DO IT!

I learned Latin to GCSE, with a tutor because my school didn't teach it. An hour a week for 3 years. I loved it! I don't agree at all about it not being useful - for me it was magical; it opened up my ability to learn other languages. It also gave me an understanding of how grammar (in any language including English) works. This sounds abstract but can be useful - after uni I did a spell teaching English as a foreign language - Latin made a huge difference to my ability to do that.

I've just started Minimus with my 8 year old. We don't home ed but he's going to get any Latin before secondary school and he's interested so I go with his interest. If your child is keen then give it a whirl.