Great Latin Adventure

Classical Legacy Press, founded by Norman and Katherine Birkett, is ready to offer homeschool families a Great Latin Adventure. If you think the words Latin and Adventure should never be used side by side in a sentence keep reading. Fans of foreign language education will appreciate and understand Katherine Birkett's enthusiasm in writing The Great Latin Adventure curriculum designed for students as young as 3rd grade, but specifically written for grades 4-6.

"I have been a language lover since I was a girl", says Birkett. "Words, grammar, etymology, writing--I love them all. It's been my privilege to study Latin, French, and Russian under various teachers, and a bit of Greek on my own. A desire to share that love of language with children has shaped my Latin program", she said.

Birkett developed The Great Latin Adventure while teaching a homeschool co-op class. She searched for an appropriate curriculum that could meet the needs of teacher and student, found nothing and decided to write her own. GLA has been homeschool tested and approved.

The Great Latin Adventure is grammar focused, not conversational. It is also teacher intensive, but extremely easy to use regardless of Latin education background. The program is not computerized or self-teaching like other homeschool foreign language programs. It is Christian focused and does not include Roman history, culture or teachings on mythology.

The 232 page student manuals can be purchased three hole punched and ready for a binder for $15.00 or three hole punched in a binder for $22.00. Teacher's manuals are $30.00 or $40.00 dependent on presentation and come with a pronunciation CD. Classical Legacy Press accepts PayPal and credit card payments on their website.

The Great Latin Adventure is divided into two levels each containing 12 lessons. A table of contents of Level One can be viewed here. To view the Table of Contents for Level II simply click here. Each level of the Great Latin Adventure includes:

• Detailed lesson plans
• Built in exercises to drill grammar, translation and vocabulary
• Vocabulary/ full chapter quizzes
• LOTS of teacher's notes and tips for each chapter to build confidence
• Answer keys that model the student sheets with answers
  

The Great Latin Adventure is divided into 12 chapters organized to take one school year to complete. It is encouraged to schedule lessons three times a week with independent study, like reviewing vocabulary with flashcards, expected. Students are expected to dedicate three, 30-45 min. study sessions per week to Latin to complete the program in a school year.

We received Level I of The Great Latin Adventure for free in exchange for this review. My 7th grade daughter Micah, a student of Latin for the past two years, helped me test market this curriculum. We found that although the 12 lesson curriculum is designed to cover 36 weeks of school we could easily blow through it in less than 6 weeks. Although the lessons are well designed, and very thorough in presentation, the material was not challenging enough to demand the amount of time allotted by the curriculum guidelines. Micah easily completed 4 days worth of work in a short one day session.

"I learned a lot from the program because there was a lot of information regarding grammar, and how many Latin conjugations there are. It seemed to be a little too easy for me, however. Too much time was spent on one particular subject which slowed me down a little too much. I think I would really like to take a course like this designed for an older student", said Micah.

Micah's summation is spot on. I loved this course for its ease of use, and detailed teaching instructions. The more notes and teaching aids I can get from a curriculum the happier I am. The Great Latin Adventure makes teaching Latin as easy as reading and following directions. Unfortunately, because it is written for the younger student it was not challenging enough for my soon to be eighth grader with two years of Latin study behind her.

Classical Legacy Press provides a 60-Day unconditional money-back guarantee for all of their products. Classical educators will want to take note of the company's Logic curriculum on their website too.

Memoria Press- First Start French

Je t’aime francaise! I love all things French; French food, French culture, my friends in France, the beautiful country of France and especially the French language. I was delighted to receive First Start French as one of my last products to review for The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Review Crew this year. First Start French, written for grades 3-8, is a wonderful curriculum designed to introduce students to the French language and culture.

Because of my love of the French language I have searched for a quality language curriculum for years. Some offer outstanding opportunity for developing conversation skills, but lack in grammar. Some develop grammar and vocabulary awareness, but lack culture study and pronunciation practice. First Start French has been carefully designed to introduce students to all aspects of French language study; vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and culture. I especially appreciate the cultural highlights nestled within each lesson in the form of proverb, story, Bible verse or song. The curriculum even includes “Notre Pere” (The Lord’s Prayer) en francaise and English.


Thirty-six basic lessons, teachers’s manual and answer key, student manual, and a CD recording of all vocabulary and songs from the lessons round out the curriculum package for $39.95. Each lesson has a standard format to follow with vocabulary, dialogue and grammar instruction on Day 1, vocabulary review, dialogue practice, grammar review, a translation exercise for Day 2, dialogue, translation, and grammar practice on Day 3 and review and quizzes for Day 4. In addition each lesson contains cultural information and a chanson (song) to enhance the learning experience. Author Danielle L. Shultz encourages making use of “great books” and other additional resources listed in the back of the teacher’s manual for advanced study. By utilizing all First Start French has to offer a student could easily receive one credit towards a beginning high school French class.

My 11 year old daughter, Micah took on the challenge of helping me out with this review. Micah has a general familiarity with the French language as our family worked through a different basic French curriculum last year. We have hosted two French students in our home over the past three years and my oldest two daughters have traveled to France the past two summers to visit our dear friends. There is a lot of French conversation that takes place in our home on occasion and of course cultural experiences abound. Micah has not spent a lot of time with grammar study, however so I was grateful for the chance to introduce these very important principals to her.

When I asked Micah what she thought of First Start French after three weeks of use she replied, “I like the songs with some of the lessons. I enjoy listening to the vocabulary and dialogue on the CD so I can learn how to say the words just right. It’s also nice that it doesn’t take much time out of the day, but I am still learning a lot.”

Our instructional lesson time was brief each day lasting no longer than 20 mins. Further practice and independent study is recommended each day by the author. I agree that extra practice is mandatory for achieving true fluency and comprehension. I once read a statistic which stated it takes 900 hours of exposure to a language before fluency is achieved. If the student of First Start French only made use of the brief 15 min. lesson time it would likely take him 22 typical school years to reach this goal, so plan on extra practice and study time. Making good use of the handy resource section in the teacher’s manual will encourage practice and make extra lesson time a breeze.

Memoria Press offers curriculum to support Latin, history, penmanship, copywork, Christian studies, logic and rhetoric for the classical home educator and their students in grades K-12. You can visit their website at http://www.memoriapress.com/ to view an on-line catalog, pricing, interesting articles regarding classical education and information about special on-line classes for older students. Whether your homeschool is classically driven or not First Start French will easily support your foreign language education needs.

Vive la France!

Auralog-Tell Me More Italian

I have a passion for foreign language education. I think it all began as a child when I first discovered that people spoke more than English. I was three years old, traveling with my family to the Worlds’ Fair in Quebec,Canada. According to the story relayed by my Mom, we stayed at the home of a local family; an alternative offered by the local community to accommodate the many tourists the Fair brought with it. I clearly remember, however, eating dinner at the family's home and listening to children speaking in French with their parents. The parents would speak, children would answer and it fascinated me. If that wasn’t enough the family dog barked and the family spoke a command to the dog who immediately obeyed. In wonder I said to my Mom, “Wow! Even the dog speaks French!” I was amazed by the vast language education of this Canadian family.

To this day I desire to be bi-lingual and try to encourage my children to be the same. There is no greater feeling than when you are able to communicate with someone from another culture in their native language building a bridge of friendship which earlier couldn’t exist because of language differences.

Over the years we have purchased a number of foreign language study curricula in search of the perfect one. I have watched the sophistication of these programs improve with the integration of artificial intelligence and voice recognition software, CD Roms and CD quality sound recordings. I have never before seen anything quite as comprehensive as Auralog Tell Me More Foreign Language Software for the Homeschool. It is definitely one of the best.

Tell Me More Italian contains 5 levels of immersion based education. An average student will complete 850 hours of instruction before they complete the program. Since a high school Carnegie unit equals anywhere from 150-180 instructional hours that equates to nearly 5 years of high school foreign language study for $249.99. Personally, I think this is a tremendous value especially since Auralog allows families to create accounts within the software for more than one student.

The five levels contain over 4,000 exercises and 37 different types of activities which develop oral and written language skills, grammar, vocabulary, and culture studies. A Day planner type option is available to the homeschool teacher providing tracking information regarding student progress, comprehension and mastery of various skills plus a time table allowing the teacher and student to understand the time commitment the program anticipates necessary for completion of the program. I thought this feature an excellent asset for high school level students who like to work independently, but still need monitoring and occasional prodding.

Tell Me More Italian comes as a DVD accompanied with a headset for use with the computer. There is no lengthy manual to read or heavy instructions for installation. I was able to load and register my program with very little effort. Unfortunately, frustration set in for me when I first began using the program as I couldn’t determine what to do first for instruction in the language. I determined I was able to choose a method for my instruction, “Free to Roam”, “Guided” or “Dynamic Mode”. I chose Dynamic Mode which I learned is designed with artificial intelligence for someone with a bit of experience with the language. All beginning students should choose “Guided Mode” which is much more of a hand holding experience.

My first day with Auralog, Tell Me More Italian left me feeling like I needed them to "tell me more", but in English! I was frustrated by the scrambled words activity, verb conjugation exercise and fill in the blank vocabulary exercise and began to doubt the quality of this amazing computer program. I contacted the company with my concerns and had the privilege of speaking to Sean Lynch, Language Solutions Consultant, Homeschool Division of Auralog for nearly an hour and a half the next day. His representation of Auralog’s customer service was unparallel.

Mr. Lynch explained to me that part of my frustration was a natural result of the immersion method of education. He told me instruction actually comes at the end of the learning experience with immersion learning rather than the forefront present with most conventional didactic approaches to language education.

Immersion language education is comparable to the experience a baby has with people speaking all around him and not understanding the language. Slowly the child begins to recognize, for example, the word dog refers to the furry animal that walks, barks and chases his tail. It will not be until later in the child’s education that he actually learns that dog is a noun, how to spell it, etc. We learn our first language through immersion and Auralog believes it is also the most effective way to learn our second and third languages.

Armed with a greater understanding of the program I worked for nearly ½ hour the next day in the program. I was able to activate my Day Planner, find the translation tool “red spot” on the screen, and locate a unique correction tool which highlighted mistakes and encouraged study and mastery. I found the glossary portion of the program by clicking on a small icon which enabled me to look up words while working on a crossword puzzle. My favorite activity of the day included a hangman type game where the student guesses letters to spell a word in Italian. If I missed the letter instead of a graphic of a man slowly hanging from a thread appearing I was entertained by a knight becoming more and more threatened by a dragon. The cartoon was humorous in nature and unfortunately I caused the knight to receive a fire-laden experience from the dragon.

As I have worked through Tell Me More Italian I have noticed slight progress with my Italian. I am finding myself pointing out different words to my kids throughout the day as they come to mind. I have thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of the program since learning about its aspects and am pleased to know if I do forget a complete users manual exists in a PDF file as a part of the program.

Auralog Tell Me More currently offers Spanish, French, Italian, German, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch and English for kids programs in their homeschool edition software. Auralog Tell Me More programs have won the 2009 Homeschool.com Seal of Approval, the Mom’s Choice Award honoring excellence, the Homeschool Parent 2009 Stamp of Approval and numerous other awards listed on their website. For those still skeptical, Auralog offers a 90 day money back guarantee on all of their language programs.

I am thrilled that I am able to continue to use this fantastic resource in my quest to become bi-lingual.

Ciao!

BiLingual Books: Italian in 10 minutes a Day!

My favorite Italian restaurant talks to me. It really does. As I dutifully head into the restrooms with my little kids before dining I am usually greeted with, “Salve Gina!” Of course, since my name is Regenia I always take this personally and reply “Salve bagno!”The adorable greeting is part of an educational language tape that plays in the restaurant’s bathrooms. Yes! My favorite Italian restaurant values education as highly as I do. When you visit you are immersed in the culture of Italy even while washing your hands before eating.

Italian in 10 Minutes a Day provides a rich cultural audio experience as engaging as a talking bathroom in an Italian restaurant. The Italian program is one of 16 different introductory language courses offered by Bilingual Books. Extremely simple to implement, interesting, educational, and filled with a light-hearted atmosphere, Italian in 10 minutes a Day will encourage a desire within your students to acquire a second language.

Their slogan, “In just “10 mins a day” you can be making new friends” is a perfect description of the philosophy of this program. The lessons are brief, 7-20 mins in length; filled with practical conversational language designed to enable persons planning a trip to Italy the ability to speak in Italian. My children and I investigated the first six lessons over the course of several weeks and learned L’Alfabeto (the alphabet), Key Question Words (ie. Dove (where), Che (what), Chi (who), Quando (when)…), parole (words) for the home, parole for local travel, numeri (numbers), I Colori (colors), and a multitude of other useful parole including cioccolato (chocolate), which according to our instructor, “is a very important word in any language”.

The learning approach is audio based; however a helpful workbook is available to accompany the audio lessons. I found the visual reinforcement of vocabulary extremely important for my old brain as I tried to learn. My only criticism of the workbook was that some of the “parole” were not listed on the referenced workbook pages. All language spoken on the CD is done by native speaking Italians; a wonderful aspect of the program if you desire to speak the language accurately. However, my old American English speaking brain many times did not catch the subtleties of the pronunciations without the written word before my eyes for reinforcement. Younger ears attached to fresher minds might not have the same issue as my younger children seemed to easily parrot back the language as directed by our instructor.

Keith Johnson, Educational Sales Director for Bilingual Books, states that the program is recommended for students at a 5th grade reading level and up. I agree that being able to read increases success with the program, but language enthusiasts could easily utilize the program with younger students. I test marketed the program with kids aged 4, 7, 11, 14, and 17 and they all enjoyed the experience at their appropriate level. Studying the language as a family gave us greater opportunity to practice words and phrases throughout the week by talking with each other in Italian.

A complete package of six audio CD’s, reproducible study aids on CD Rom, and written text with flash cards, worksheets, and “sticky labels” for labeling vocabulary throughout your home is available on the Bilingual books website for $59.95. Additional work texts are $19.95, CD Rom only for $14.95, audio CD wallet for $42.95 and a very basic Italian language map with over 1,000 Italian phrases for $7.95. For a minimal investment of $59.95 your family can easily have everything they need for a one year course of conversational Italian. *Currently, customers can take advantage of a Traveler's special for the Italian and French programs. The worktext, CD Rom and language map are offered in a package priced at $29.95.

Although the program prides itself on the “10 minutes a day” motto, students will want to spend several days on each lesson for mastery of the language. The key for success in my opinion is small doses of exposure often. I love Italian in 10 minutes a day because it easily fits into my personal educational philosophy for language acquisition.

Italian in 10 minutes a Day is a wonderful asset to any foreign language study. The price, flexibility of the program and gentle instruction make it a joy for students of any age. My children and I looked forward to our lessons each day we used the curriculum. The voices of the male and female native speakers, occassional traditional italian music and constant encouragement from the narrator brought Italian culture and language to life for us. At the conclusion of our sixth lesson we were told to "congratulate ourselves, take a deep breath and realize we were one step closer to having a wonderful time on our visit to Italy." I think I can see Rome already!