UPDATE: Congrats to winner, Melinda Walters! Thanks to everyone for entering!
I had a hard time learning foreign languages as a young student. However, I’m excited to learn Latin alongside my littles! Following the classical way, we’re learning Latin, because it is a root language. This should make learning additional languages later, like Spanish or French, easier for all of us. Plus it will increase our understanding of the English language.
Since I am not historically good at learning languages myself, I started looking for a curriculum that would teach my littles and teach me in two ways: 1) teach me Latin and 2) teach me to teach Latin. Maybe you’re looking for the same thing? Let me tell you what I’ve found!
Once I started looking, Song School Latin drew my attention quickly. I had heard it praised among friends and CC is now recommending it in their catalogue. Classical Academic Press sent me the full program with all four elements for Book One to use with my littles. We’ve been trying them out over the beginning of our summer and I’m excited to tell you more about them!
Here’s the list of materials we’ve been using:
1. Teacher’s Edition: Contains copies of each page in the student guide, as well as 35 pages of bonus activities and answers for each activity.
2. Student Guide: 31 lessons divided into chapters with every 4th or 5th lesson being review of the previous lessons. Each chapter has 4-6 activities (like Practice Your Lesson, Grow Your English, Chapter Story, and Show What You Know) for the lesson, which could easily be divided into daily review activities. In the appendices, there’s a chapter-by-chapter glossary, an alphabetical glossary, and an end of year crossword.
3. DVD Set: Each new lesson in the guide has an accompanying teacher led lesson on the DVD. There is a female and a male teacher. The first teacher introduces the new words for the day in a conversational manner. The second teacher instructs on derivatives. There’s also a fun animated story featuring Simeon the Monkey which uses the new vocabulary words and is continued from lesson to lesson. A second animated feature, the derivative river, is also part of each DVD lesson. It’s a fun visual that demonstrates how the Latin word is the root of other words found in English, Spanish, and French.
4. Latin Monkey Match flashcard game: There are four decks included – red (ch 1-7), green (ch 8-15), blue (ch16-22), and orange (ch 24-30), as well as directions for playing Memory, Go Fish!, and Banana Peel. You can add in more decks as you cover the chapters. They can also be used as traditional flashcards to review the vocabulary.
5. Music CD (included in student guide): There are 60 tracks, divided into two portions; 30 for classical and 30 for ecclesiastical. Those two pronunciations are offered, so you can choose which you’d like to learn. The student guide explains the differences between the two.
Two days a week we’ve been watching a lesson on the DVD set. We’ve done the student guide activities mostly aloud as a group. In the future, I plan to have my two older guys (age 8 and 6) complete these independently with pencil and paper. While my two younger littles, when interested, can complete these free coloring pages. Classical Academia Press offers these free on their site with one page for each vocabulary word in book 1 (and book 2). Isn’t that a great option for the younger student? I think my oldest guy, who loves to color and draw, might choose to color these some of the time too.
As we add Song School Latin into our normal school day routine in the fall, my plan is for us to watch the DVD lesson one day a week, use another day to review the vocabulary as a group by listening to the music CD, and two days to complete the lesson activities. Each day will only be about 15 minutes worth of study, so totally doable for my young ones’ attention spans. While I’ve already seen my oldest really enjoying the lessons and picking it all up so quickly, I know even my youngest will glean some new knowledge here and there. They love telling people the words as they learn them. They’ve added the vocabulary words into their regular conversations with each other and me, which really is the best practice for all of us! They’re having fun with it and looking forward to each lesson.
Here are my favorite things about Song School Latin:
1. There is a DVD available to accompany the lesson. As I said, I need someone to teach me how to teach Latin, so I find this immensely helpful. Also, as we’re about to add a newborn into our family mix, I think the 15 minute break of someone else teaching and them sitting to listen will be very helpful to me in making our school day work.
It’s worth mentioning the DVD offers more information then the teacher guide or student book alone.
2. It’s attainable. While teaching Latin is intimidating to me, Song School Latin is not. The lessons are fun and simple and executable.
3. I appreciate that both ecclesiastical and classical pronunciations are provided, so you can choose which track you want to follow. (See what CC’s take is here.)
4. It’s working! They’re learning Latin and already making connections to English. How exciting to see them learn so quickly! A quick story: We learned in the first lesson that in the Latin alphabet, there is no letter w. When visiting a local craft store, we saw a line of chipboard letters. Since our last name is Watson, I strolled down the line to look for the letter w. It was the only empty spot and I said, “There’s no w.” to which my oldest said, “Just like in Latin.” HA! It caught me off guard, but I thought it was so cool to see his mind making the connections already.
Are you planning to teach your littles Latin? When do you think you’ll start and does this sound like a program you’d enjoy? After a friend’s encouragement to start with a little more Latin before the Challenge years, we decided to go for it. I think we’ve found just the right fit for our family.
If you’re interested, there are a few things you can do.
*You can order your own set for your family with this discount code, CCAH20, worth 20% off your order of all Classical Academic Press products except the live, online courses and Singapore Math. Good through July 6th*
*You can also enter below to win your own set of Book 1 materials, courtesy of Classical Academic Press. Giveaway ends July 5th. Happy entering!*
Need more convincing to learn Latin? Check out 5 Great Reasons to Study Latin
This looks amazing. I was just looking at this online the other day. This is our first year doing CC and I think this would be a huge help. Thanks for reviewing this!
Was trying to do things on our own, using a little bit of everything.
I’ve been looking at this for a while now and would love to add it to our studies. We just do the basics through CC right now. Thanks for the thorough review!
Sarah Sanders
Great review! I was going to look into this curriculum at Practicum in a couple of weeks. Thanks for sharing, it sounds perfect!
Pick me!!
I was looking to this program a few days ago! I love when memory verses/songs are incorporated to learn important language components. Latin tends to fall to the wayside in our house so I would love to win a copy!
We do Rosetta Stone French but would love to do this for Latin. Thank you for the giveaway.
I hope I win, I know nothing about Latin and this looks simple.
Spanish and latin
We stick to the CC memory work for Latin but this sounds like a great way to expand our study. We have a spanish speaking family come over once in a while and they teach us Spanish and we teach them English.
My girls are learning Spanish through the Easy Peasy All In One Homeschool online. It begins with lessons in Latin. I can see where it would be beneficial to learn Latin before or alongside another foreign language. This looks like a great fit for my son.
I am the one that needs the most help with Latin especially since I am tutoring challenge B next year while my kids are still in foundations.
I had planned to do Latin starting in 3rd grade, but now I can’t decide! Thanks for the review.
CC memory work
Just starting our second language adventure
So far, we are just doing the CC Latin memory work. This would be a great addition!
We LOVE Latin…..this would be a huge blessing to us to win! I’m homeschooling 5 this year and everything adds up so quickly, financially wise.
We haven’t started any languages yet, this will be our first year homeschooling and I’ll have a second grader and kindergartener. I would love to win this though! It would be a great start to our language introduction next year.
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It would be such a blessing to win this!! Starting this year with our twin boys! Thanks for the opportunity!
Kimberly Scales
We have used the DVD, but not the books at this point. The kids enjoy it as it feels like a ‘break’ to them. We h
ave a Rosetta Stone curriculum for Chinese.
Nothing yet. I want to use SSL!
Been considering starting this soon as my child has a fair grasp of phonics. Would be so helpful.
We have tried many Latin programs in the past and Song School Latin is by far my favorite. I used SSL 1 with my son two years ago and would love to have this set with the DVDs to use with my daughter this year. Thanks for the give-away.
We need a Latin program, I think this will be perfect Thank you for the give away.
Carlen
cs_cooper {at} Hotmail [dot] com
Would love to give this a try!
I bought Song School Greek last year. Would love to have the Latin too!
My 2nd grade son is asking for Spanish, but I’m trying to convince him that Latin will help him learn Spanish AND more. would love to try this.
Thanks for the review. Would love to try it out!
We are in our third year of CC and this looks like it might suppliment our Latin memory work well!
Our first year of Foundations went well with the memory work CC provides. I would love to expand and supplement with this!
I’ve been wanting to start Latin with my seven year old, but she’s not quite ready for Latin for Children. This would be perfect! I have a 10 year old working through Visual Latin and it would be great to have them both studying Latin right now.
Thanks for the review. I’ve been on the fence with this program and your insights were helpful. We’d love to give this a try.
This look like a doable way to add more Latin to our CC regime. Please explain why your friend recommended more Latin before Challenge.
I commented already, but I don’t see it posted! I would love to win Song School Latin!!!
Looks like a great program! This is our first year in CC, and I’d love to have this for home.
This would be a great addition to Foundations. Thanks!
Just starting out this year!! This would be a great tool 🙂
We’ve done Latin with my son with Latina Christiana, which worked well. For Spanish we tried Transparent Languages Online. When he was 3/4 of the way through the program, he couldn’t translate a simple sentence for me (even though he was getting great grades on all the tests). He was only remembering for the test and only learning phrase by phrase without an understanding of grammar. Oh dear! I’m sticking with grammar based when my girls start, and have looked into Song School. I also have to find a good Spanish now that my son is almost in high school.
This is going to be our first year using a language program and this is exactly what we want.
This will be our first year with CC and would love this!
Thanks for your review. I wasn’t sure if we would want the DVD or not. It is good to hear others experiences with it first. Maybe I’ll win it!
My youngers love learning to music!
we haven’t studied language yet except for the latin part of cc.
We also use Song School Latin. Great program!
We will be studying latin when we start CC in the fall.
Have not read up on the different Latin programs out there so found this review to be helpful!
I would like to try this, thanks!
Would love to try this! Thanks for the giveaway!
I would love to have this resource for my kids and for myself! Thanks for the opportunity!
Oh! And we, too, just study Latin through CC. We have yet to add more.
What a generous giveaway!
We have used Duolingo to learn Spanish, but I would love to have this program to teach Latin!!!
Thanks for the insight… I was wondering about this for next year.
This looks great. Thanks for the review
We have been wanting to study extra latin for quite some time now and this looks doable for us too. Thanks for the review!
We try to memorize all our CC lating memory work. I would love to do a little more by using this curriculum.
We have a weekly Latin club at home with other families. They watch a did lesson and then get to play together for a little bit.
This will be our first year in CC. I bought SS Latin at the practicum, glad to hear your positive review!
This will be our first year learning Latin. Thank you for this review.
This will be our first year learning a language.
I have tried learning Latin along with my 9th grader this year… not successful! My 8 year old and I would love to try out this Latin curricula! Thanks for a chance to win!!
Ordered prima latin but looks too hard for my 7 yr old…would love to win song school!
We’d love this to start our Latin learning.
We would love to try this at home. I have been looking at it already! 🙂
We would love to start learning Latin at home!!
Song School Latin…awesome!
Looking forward to researching this program more – thx for the information!
I would love to try this.
Thanks for the review! I have been planning on looking into it, so this was helpful!
I forgot to add, we have been using the latin from CC memory work.
I’ve been doing what I can with a couple of French story books, praying well-known prayers in French, some online games/lessons, and an activity book I found. I should really do more songs! I’ve had a hard time finding language programs for little people. I have really been wanting SSL!!
We use Mango from the public library.
My oldest is about to enter Challenge A, and we only have one year of F/E under our belts. I am definitely nervous about the Latin, so I order the Latin Tour Guide DVD’s. Hopefully that will help!
Song School Spanish soon and SS Latin is on my list!
Thanks for the information, I really want to check this out
I have been pondering adding this to our curriculum, thanks for the review!
We are new to CC this year and learning Latin is going to be a huge challenge for me, Mom! As I have studied the catalog, I have come back to this Song School Latin page thinking it would be a great addition!! Thank you for the review!
we havent studied languages too much as we havent found a program thst works for us, but we are very excited to try Song School!
heidi
I found your website just now by googling how to classically homeschool at home!! What a blessing. I just grinned when I saw your giveaway. I went to a homeschool conference this past weekend. I actually only went to the vendors to look and see the material. I saw this at the Classical table and looked it over. I think this would be awesome for my kids! Currently, we aren’t doing any foreign language, but I want that to change! We would love it win. Have a blessed fourth!!!
I’m not…yet! We’re starting CC this August, so I’m reading up on different ways to begin! 🙂
We’d like to start Latin this coming school year and love the looks of SSL!
We use Workbooks and CDs.
Our family would love to win this. This is our 2nd year of CC and we need lots of help with our Latin.
We have been focusing on the CC Latin alone but really want to add more. Song School sounds perfect!
We’re entering Challenge this year, so this would be super helpful!
We’d love to try this out next year for cycle 3.
I’d love to give SSL a whirl!
This would be a great addition for this year!
We aren’t doing any additional language study…Would be interested to try this though!
Would love to win!
This looks like it would be a good fit for my children.
We haven’t started yet. We will start homeschooling this fall. Kathy C
We love Song School Latin! Haven’t used the DVDs, but would love to try them out!
We are doing Latin with CC. I keep thinking I should do more but they are so little 🙂
I got the student book but would like to get the other items as well. I am excited to get started on this! We have played around with
vocab in several languages…just for fun. I have looked at duo lingo online too.