Curriculum

In my last post, I mentioned choosing a teaching style. I read up on all of them, and found a great number of useful things in many, if not all, of them. But none seemed to suit us perfectly. My two boys are polar opposites, personality wise, and what would work perfectly with one would be an utter failure with the other. So I was compelled to "wing it".

The only curriculums I have ever had was for phonics and language. I lacked confidence in teaching phonics, and was grateful for the help of a set curriculum, which BOTH of my boys adored. It's called Saxon Phonics. It gets poor reviews from some families, due to its lack of colorful pictures and its high level of repetition, but I believe it was those very things that helped us. It did wonders for my sons who both struggled with learning to read. My older boy didn't speak properly, - there were a number of letters he couldn't even begin to pronounce correctly - which made it nearly impossible for him to recognize a letter when he heard it. The younger one, well, he was only 3. Once we used Saxon (only years K-1 were necessary), they learned quickly and easily, and now they are reading well above grade level.

The other curriculum, one we use currently, is Latin Primer by Canon Press. I bought is because I don't speak Latin... yet. Oh, but let me take a moment to heap praises on this curriculum. It is amazingly easy to use. You just read a page or two of teacher's notes, to yourself, and pop the CD into a player. The teacher on the CD speaks the lesson for the week, with a student who repeats what she says. The child (and in our case the parent as well) repeats everything the teacher says. She gives vocabulary words, a weekly "chant" which helps you to remember all of those crazy conjugations, and a quote (but there appears to always be a "bonus" quote as well, which are a lot of fun to say). There is a page for the child to look at during the lesson, and then there is a worksheet (or several), and a weekly quiz. To help with the review during the week, there are flash cards with the latin word on one side, and the english translation on the other. There isn't a great deal of explanation of why the words are said one way or another - in latin word use changes the word entirely. But at young ages, children are more hindered than helped by lengthy explanations. This is a language they are learning, and even a baby can learn it. Youngsters are natural language sponges. In fact, you may find it slightly disturbing, as I did, when your little one hears an entire sentence in Latin, once, and rattles it off perfectly, while you can barely remember the first word. The lessons progress easily, and the knowledge increases rapidly. If we keep going at this rate (the one suggested by the curriculum, which is NOT considered accelerated, by any means), my sons will have 6 years of Latin under their belts by the time they are 14 and 12. At that point, they will be well equipped to study any other language that catches their fancy, and quite a bit in the areas of science and law will be laid opened to them.

It is our intention to also study Greek, and rather sooner than later - since I want my boys to be able to read the Bible without needing an English translation. So, we will be buying a curriculum for that as well. Any suggestions for good ones would be welcome. I would be grateful for it.