Latin at Primary age? Can I teach this at home?

[VolumniaDedlock]

Can I start by saying that I do know the thread title makes me sound like an utter bellend?

Anyway, dd1 has expressed an interest in learning Latin. No school round here offers it, primary or secondary. I really enjoyed it at school and would happily spend an hour a week reading through all the Caecilius stories with her (although I've forgotten most of it). Would this work? and can you get decent resources to do this? I'm not hoping that she'll turn into the new Mary Beard, but think it might be fun to do together.

Sounds like a great idea!

Try Minimus Mus

Bless re the bellend comment volume I was just being nosey as I have no experience of learning Latin whatsoever. If your child wants to learn it why not

Galore Park have a couple of text books aimed at primary age. They might be worth looking at.

I have heard good things about Minimus as well.

Minimus is fun to read but not great for grammar if she's serious about learning (nor is the CLC, for that matter).

Galore Park's "So You Really Want To Learn Latin" or the RC Bass "Latin Practice Exercises" are grammatically very rigorous if you want to supplement the fun story stuff with something a bit more formal.

thanks all - we'll have a look at the resources suggested. She's only 8, so I'm not sure I want to "amo, amas, amat" her to death just yet, so would be ok with just picking up bits of grammar here and there. She's been dead keen on the Romans since we came back from Rome and Ostia Antica, and I think she'd just like to pick up a bit of the vocab.

Then I would steer clear of so you really want to learn Latin. Might be Ok with so you really want to learn Latin Prep though.

Lots of prep schools teach Latin. It would be interesting to see what resources they use. Under the new curriculum her school should offer a language and schools are permitted to teach a classical language! Some schools could decide to do this.

Prep schools will probably use something that aligns to CE syllabus.

I think Cambridge Latin, Ecce Romani, and both the galore park books are in common use. We used Oxford Latin but I'm not sure that's ever been as popular as the Cambridge course.

Minimus is perfect, DD did formal lessons and learnt a lot.

This would be a fabulous project for you both! And, ime, it's not hard to recover the earlier parts of what you may have forgotten from your schooldays.

It depends what you want - The Cambridge Latin route will give lots of fun and a vast website structure with masses of Roman context. But the grammar is inadequate for moving forward.

So You Really Want To Learn Latin is a proper course and, importantly, absolutely brilliant where the "teacher" is revising one step ahead of the "pupil". Your best investment might be the corresponding spoken Latin CDs. Enormous fun - (if you're me) with the texts read by schoolchildren. Think the first one was around £25 from Amazon.

Another place worth looking is the OU's beginner's Latin stuff on their site. Very helpful for reinforcing the early grammar. (Also free.) Although you may want to keep that till you're both committed to plunging into real grammar.

There are lots of other offer websites (can't remember names) that provide all sorts of different learning aids: quizzes and flash cards and what have you - some specifically for children.

Good luck - will you come back in 13 years when she's picking up her First for Classics?

... "lots of other websites" ...

We used Minimus for a bit when DD wanted to learn Latin - and we actually managed to get the book from our local library for a trial run first. I do know some people who have kept on with it, and they have found that moving from Minimus to Cambridge Latin worked well for them.

There are also a couple of Latin learning apps for iPad/Phone. They won't do much about grammar but are a fun way of learning some vocab.

My DD has also decided she wants to.learn Latin. She is 7. I have got minimus to use as a teacher I know who uses it for a primary Latin club uses it and thinks it's great. If she really takes to it we will.move on to something else. ( her ambition is to read the magna carta !!!!!!!!)

My DD has been 'learning' Latin in Y6 as part of English enrichment.
It basically consists of some Y10 pupils from the local comp coming in every fortnight with their teacher and introducing basic vocab and a bit of Roman England history. They have great fun playing a lot of games, doing word searches etc. They have done no grammar at all.

So how do you feel about it Seeline? Do you want her to be taught more rigorously or are you happy with things as they are?

(I'm inclined to think real English enrichment would only come with at least a basic experience of the structure of Latin grammar.)

Would you like her to be prepared for Latin GCSE (in or out of school)?

DH and I both did Latin at school with Ecce Romani and can still wax lyrical on the doings of Marcus et Sextus and Cornelia versus Flavia. We also have Asterix in Latin which is fun in any language.

I think a bit of Latin is fun parent / dc time and it is not like you ever have to take it seriously enough to be able to speak it properly

I am off to research Minimus Mus!

Zero - Personally I think it's a shame that they aren't doing it a little bit more formally, but as they are relying on the assistance of another school I guess that's the problem. The French they have done is laughable - being taught by non-specialist class teachers, who haven't even got a GSCE in it.... The pronunciation is appalling. I think it will probably more of a hindrance than a help when she starts secondary.

All the Cambridge Latin course is online anyway, my 8yo DD1 has had a poke around in there. Probably depends on how seriously she wants to do it, I'd be looking for someone to teach it if she's serious, but the online stuff is great if she is just expressing an interest

And what if a parent has no Latin to revise? Are these still possible?

Miaow my DH rescued his old school's Ecce Romani when they stopped teaching Latin - now that you've asked it may be coming out the bookcase tonight!

Oh - good question Atomic.

I guess it would depend on whether said parent has any language learning experience at all.

Cambridge Latin would certainly be approachable - if you'd learnt any other language you'd know what it was not teaching you. But without extra help I'm not sure how a complete language novice would get any clear understanding of grammatical structure, and thus how to form a new sentence, from it.

With So You Really Want To Learn it might be a good idea, with no previous Latin, to give yourself a month's head start; do the first few chapters, learn the verbs, do the exercises, buy the answers book. Also try to read around the subject, explore the online stuff, (I liked the OU site,) immerse yourself ... So that once you come to teach it to a child you feel a little more confident and know more than she does!

But this is all easy to say. In the past (despite a wordy background) I've started and given up on Mandarin and Greek because I was too lazy to persevere without regular teaching and the threat of failing a vocab test ...

Not going to be much help here as I only clicked on the thread because I did Latin and DS starts in Y3 in September, I believe with Minimus. He's lucky as his school does it.

I learnt with Ecce Romani from the age of 12 I might have to go on ebay and look for it and scraped a B at 'O' Level so I wasn't that good, but I still have a lot of love for the language as it's helped with so much comprehension since.

Thank you, zero. Well... I have GCSE A in German (from olden days), GCSE level French and GCSE level Japanese... I have no problems retaining vocabulary, however, I have never studied grammar (trendy shitty seventies education).
I know a lot of Latin roots of english words, and could recite huge chunks of mass in Latin not Catholic, just sung rather too many different settings of Requiem mass, Mag & Nunc!
I think it would be a hard slog for me, but I have the faculty IYSWIM.

thanks for all your thoughts. i just had a play on the CLC website and was surprised at how much I can remember.

DD1 came and had a look over my shoulder, and had a crack at one of the first vocab tests. It was only a multiple choice thing but her Spanish saw her through the lot, and she seems really keen to do some more. I'm going to pick up whatever texts I can buy cheaply on ebay!