Lively Latin or, The Big Book as it is called, covers all the elements of a first year elementary Latin program in a fun and engaging way. These elements include: 1st and 2nd declension Latin nouns in their cases, and genders, the use of the nominative and ablative cases; 1st conjugation verbs in the present, imperfect, and future tenses; the irregular to be verb in 3 tenses; 1st and 2nd declension adjectives; sentence diagramming; 175 Latin words with the many English derivatives which come from them.
It also covers Roman history from Romulus’ founding of the city in 753 BC to the end of the 3rd Punic War in 146 BC, complete with maps, paintings, review puzzles and activities.
It is a big book, if you get the printed 4oo high-quality page version. This is my all-time favorite Latin program! We have completed a year with my 5th grade son, but we have not finished the 400 pg. book. We worked on Latin 3 x a week, at our own pace.
Reasons we love the “Big Book”:
I love the idea of learning grammar and Latin together. Saves me time! Being the history buffs that we are, we love the snippets of Roman history. It has plenty of vocabulary, the organization of the order that you learn things makes sense. The explanations of what and why you learn certain things are excellent (what other Latin programs are missing). The Big Book is a parts to whole program, meaning it starts with the fundamentals and builds up from there to a full understanding of the language. We learn better with this approach as it teaches the patterns of the language. The whole to parts approach forces students to memorize individual words and their meanings without the benefit of the pattern. We have failed to excel in Latin using this approach in the past.
A few unexpected extras that are included:
1. The history of our language
2. Full color studies of paintings depicting Roman history and other artists.
3. Character studies of famous Romans.
4. Lessons on Greek and Roman gods.
5. Plenty of repetition.
6. Choice of Classical or Ecclesiastical pronunciation
Go here to see the suggested timeline for Lively Latin.
Visit the Lively Latin website for more information and for ordering the Big Book 1 or Big Book 2.
Written by Brenda, Classical eclectic mother of 5. She is sold on the benefits of teaching Latin to all her children. She blogs at Tie That Binds Us about her homeschool journey.
Brenda is a homeschooling mother of 5, who has a wonderful husband encouraging her to be the best woman that God has created her to be. Together they are very intentional about spending time together as a family. She considers her daily life with her children as her ministry and has found many avenues to encourage others to live a lifestyle of learning. She is the founder of an online homeschool community, Our Lifestyle of Learning and a curriculum review site authored by a group of well-known homeschool bloggers, Curriculum Choice. She blogs about their homeschool journey and family traditions at Tie That Binds Us.
What ages would you recommend this for? I am looking for something that I can do with a fourth grader and also include an 8th grader with no previous Latin.