Mood:  a-ok

When we first began to homeschool, our oldest, was going in to fourth grade and the other two weren't in school yet. We wanted John Allen to have the best education possible. One that he couldn't get in the public school system. I did some research and found a great Latin program that was geared toward elementary kids. He liked it so much that I planned on teaching all of my kids Latin when they were old enough.

Unfortunately it was about that same time that we began noticing major problems with our middle child, Joshua, and began the process of trying to find out what was wrong. After a couple years of misdiagnoses or incomplete diagnosis we finally were thrilled to finally get to the bottom of what was was causing his difficulties. He had asperger's syndrome - which is on the autism spectrum. However, although we were relieved, we also knew that our son would never learn the same as other children his age. One of the furthest things from our mind was trying to teach him another language. That just seemed out of the question...until this year.

If you remember, about a month ago I wrote a review on a great online Spanish program that Joshua loved. Nevertheless, when we had an opportunity to review a Latin program by Classical Academic Press that was on his level, I had reservations. He loved Spanish and wanted to continue with the program that I reviewed. Could he handle Latin as well? Could he handle Latin at all? We decided to try it and find out. We were not disappointed.

Although we aren't as far in it as we had hoped because of the death of my mom and the illness of Sarah's mom, we have had a lot of fun with Song School Latin and are planning to continue with both the Spanish program and his new Latin program.

One of the biggest helps with the Spanish program was the great songs that went with the new words that he was learning. Well, sure enough, Song School Latin is true to its name. The back bone of the program is it's catchy songs. The songs, the wonderful, easy layout of the program, and the fun workbook are what has sold us on this curriculum that is geared toward Kindergarten through Second Grade students. The fact that he has loved it helped alot of course!

There is really no set number of days that you have to do this program. I will tell you that each of the 31 Chapters has three to five workbook pages that the student works with so it would be very easy to take a week for each Chapter. Every four or five chapters is a review week (seven total) and those usually have more workbook pages and could take more than a week to do. Therefore, if you wanted to work quickly and do more than one workbook page a day, you could easily complete this in about half of a school year or, if you took it at a slower pace you could use it as a whole year study.

We have been taking the first day to go over the new words (each chapter has up to five) and listening to the songs (most chapters have one but some have more). Then, throughout the rest of the week, we will listen to the song (s) again, and do one of the workbook pages. The instructors manual has copies of the workbook pages with the answers and has extra practice pages that you can copy for your student if you feel he needs more review. By the way, if you have a preference of Classical or Ecclesiastical Pronunciations, the song CD has all of the songs sung with both pronunciations. So, just click on the one that you want your child to learn!

The following video is not of my son, but this could very well be my son singing one of the catchy tunes during the day.

Each of the regular chapters has some type of matching or filling in the blank section, but they all have a place where your student can practice his printing skills by doing a "trace the dot" where they trace the new words or phrases for the chapter. They also have a really neat section that's called "Grow Your English" where your child learns what English words came from the words that they are studying in that chapter.

The review chapters have the matching and fill in the blank questions to review the previous words but also has a really fun chapter story where a familiar story is told but with some words replaced with Latin words. For some reason the three little pigs asking "Quid est tuum praenomen?" (What is your name?) and getting the answer "Meum praenomen est wolf." (My name is wolf.) struck us as funny.

As you can tell, I am really thrilled about this beginning Latin curriculum. When he is finished, Joshua will have learned over 100 Latin words that deal with such things as manners, people, pets, weather, the body and even Christmas. And, you really can't beat the price. The bundle price, where you get the Student Book and CD, the Teacher's Book and a fun matching game called the Latin Monkey Match Flashcard Game, is only $64.95. You can find out more about this and levels of Latin curriculum by clicking here or on any of the hi-lighted links above. Speaking of other levels, some of the other TOS Crew Members reviewed other levels and you can find out what they had to say by clicking here. Happy Home Educating!

As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew I was sent a Student Copy (including listening CD), Teacher's Copy and a partial set of the Latin Monkey Match Flashcard Game in order to try out and review on my blog.

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