Prima Latina & Latina Christiana concerns about religion

[Black Orchid]

Hi there-

We are a UU homeschooling family inspired by TWTM and waldorf. We are pretty eclectic and child-driven learning that just happens to match up with these philosophies.

So in the fall we are planning to begin Latin. I did a 360 on this because originally I didn't understand why one would start littles on Latin (!) But seeing my 6 YO DD thrive... I mean really go nuts over some of the taste that she got (she adores memorizing things... she seriously spends a lot of her day memorizing things to recite to us: poetry, passages from books, math facts) I started to see why Susan Wise Bauer recommends Latin!

Anyway, I am concerned about too much Christian-centric things being taught. I have no problem with prayers, etc... we are UUs after-all BUT I don't want her learning that there is "one truth", etc.

Anyone have insight into how religious this gets? I am totally fine with reading bible passages, even learning about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, etc... but I'm not looking for preachy, YK?

Any thoughts?

[PJsmomma]

We just started this--2 days ago!

So far, I just seeing it teaching prayers. It seems one per week.

I don't see it being preachy. It's pretty much vocab and exercises.

I could be wrong since we're new to it.

[PGTlatte]

There are other programs to choose from. Some are secular and some have only minimal religious content. Here is a chart that may be helpful:

http://www.homeschoolchristian.com/c...comparison.php

The one I am using now is Song School Latin. It does have a bit of religious content but it is very minimal. There is a Christmas chapter and two of the stories in the book (that have Latin words inserted) are Bible stories, but they are not called out as Bible stories and there is no mention of God outside of the Christmas chapter, so if you read the stories without pointing out their origin, they would just be stories.

I am not planning to use the written work in Song School Latin; I am only using it for verbally learning some vocabulary and building an interest. When DS1 is ready to do some written work, I will probably use Latin's Not So Tough starting at Level 2 because the written work looks elementary enough for him. The chart indicates that LNST is secular until Level 5. I have also looked at Lively Latin. It is secular, but the first parts of it look too advanced for DS1 so I may use that one later if I decide not to continue with LNST.

[pigpokey]

Believe Rosetta Stone offers secular Latin. You could supplement with passage memorization.

[Black Orchid]

thank you for your thoughts!

I looked into SSL, but it seems a little below where I want to start with DD1... she is reading at a 5th grade level and has been for a year, so I want a program that challenges her reading and vocab.

Is the Rosetta Stone Latin verbal? I'm not looking to create fluency, just to encourage learning grammar and language structure to (hopefully) make it easier for her to learn foreign languages in the future.

[PGTlatte]

On the link I posted, some of the products listed are links, and if you follow them, you can get to reviews of that product. I don't know if they have a review for Rosetta Stone or not but you could check. Another good place to read thoughts on various Latin programs is the welltrainedmind forum. You can search by the name of the program and usually find quite a few posts about whatever it is, including how religious it is.

Some of them also have reviews at Amazon.

One thing I learned I had to find out about each program was whether it was a whole-to-parts or a parts-to-whole approach. If you want to start with grammar, you will need to look for that type of program.

You might like Lively Latin since your DD is reading at the level she is. I was able to flip through the printed binders at a friend's house. Our DS has vision issues and is still struggling at the grade 1 reading level so it wasn't a fit for us. But it looked like a very well laid-out grammatical approach. At the product website, you can ask to be emailed a free sample lesson.

For myself (I don't know Latin and want to learn it too), I just ordered Classical Latin by J C McKeown, both the textbook and the workbook. The author has a lot of audio support at his website. You can also download the first chapter of the book.