2009-Apr-20 - When in Rome...Huh?...Latin Studies?? Yes...and Loving THEM!
As part of The Old Schoolhouse Crew I was offered Latina Christiana Introduction to Christian Latin by Cheryl Lowe of Memoria Press to review...wow!
We began today working through the materials to find it very comprehensive. Latina Christiana Book 1 is for those with little or no previous Latin exposure~yep, that's us!
Digging in today, we viewed the DVD instruction: welcome, introduction and lesson 1 thus far. We listened and went over Adeste Fedeles (O Come All Ye Faithful) which was really fun as my daughter took the music to the piano to pull the notes for us to sing...We listened to our first Gregorian chant online and even learned to say and recite Latin greetings for both myself (as teacher) and them (as students.)
I just HAD to begin telling you all about Memoria Press' offering for Latin~I will keep you updated with our progress with several posts. We used the study for an extension into geography to discuss today's Latin saying by St. Benedict who is known as one of the founders of Western Civilization..."So just where is that?" I asked my kids...out came the map and a discussion of what is the Western Civilization...
I can't wait to get into Famous Men of Rome and the Christian Studies Books 1-3 to tell you about these...KEEP cking on us...We are a work in progress!
Our first day was absolutely awesome!
I liked the ease and thoroughness of the lessons~fully scripted and the DVD does the work for me...we were all able to watch. The lessons are adequately divided by content and with clickable contents navigation. This means I don't have to hunt down where we need to be!
The Latina Christiana Teacher Manual is easy to follow, spiral bound with easy to clean cover. Go see Memoria Press for all your Classical Education needs~with Christian emphasis HERE ! I love (amo) this!! Whoohoo!
The Crew is working through Memoria Press products too...go see what they are saying HERE!
Don't forget to ck back as I will be updating our progress!
See ya!
Blessings
SisterTipster
UPDATE: 4-22-09 Today we jumped into Famous Men of Rome. Now to explain our use: I have middle schoolers, and we have looked at Rome already this year so I wanted to find a good solid reason to return. We had studied it in our history overview this year, but In the teaching plans the perfect extension was given to me~a very good article: Rome and America. I had my kids take notes on this to give them a more solid idea of WHY Rome is so important to know. Do you know that our American Founding Fathers (we reviewed their names) used Roman names for each other and Roman sayings in their debates when framing the tenates of our government? There are statues of Washington as a Roman??
We visited Washington, DC several years ago as a family, and I have been there several times being charmed by it's classical archictecture so that I truly did understand that it was patterned in many ways with Roman symbols and buildings to rememble the Rome of the Ancient world.
We worked on the vocabulary words so that when we begin reading...we are going to jump into the Republic period...which is the middle great period of Rome, before the Empire, the time of the birth of Christ and the writing of the New Testament and Early Christian church. It's the Republic that our country is patterned from!
I am finding Famous Men of Rome, Text, Student and Teacher's Manuel all easy to pick up from really right dab in the middle! THIS is a plus! You might be like me and need a resource to pull from or as I would normally do begin in the first lesson...but it's GREAT to know it's so easily adaptable this way!! I LOVE the illustrations included by Memoria Press~it's the most beautifully illustrated I've seen! It's soft cover and easy to handle too! OK...now you know we are progressing, and I will update you on our reading tomorrow!
UPDATE: 4-23-09 We launched into reading about Julius Caesar...the reading is easy and so well written. My kids enjoyed this read aloud as we began Famous Men of Rome!
You can read about this once controversial statue 
