Are YOU Giving YOUR Kids a Classical Education? With Memoria Press You CAN!

I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review.  I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.  All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC Regulations.

One of the things that as a homeschooler I can do, is add in different parts of a classical education, or one that was similar to what I had in Catholic school. I was predominately taught by Jesuit priests and Dominican nuns, so no surprise that Latin was one of the areas we had to have a basic understanding of. And when you think about it, it makes sense, as Latin is the foundation of a great deal of our language!  Thanks to Memoria Press, I was able to find a program that was perfectly suited to helping me bring some of that classical education to our homeschool and allowing Miss Grace to basic learn Latin, and prayers, with their Prima Latina set!

The Prima Latina set is their introduction set to Latin, and while it is aimed at kids grades 1-3, I knew Miss Grace was going to need something simple to start with, as the foreign language classes we have tried did not go well at more advanced levels. Memoria Press offers 6 different Latin courses, that do increase in difficulty! Their Latin courses also include Latina Christiana (grades 3-5),  First Form Latin (grades 4-9), Second Form Latin (grades 5-10), Third Form Latin (grades 6-11), Fourth Form and Latin + Henle I (grades 7-12). My fellow reviewers are checking those courses out, and I'll share their links with you, after I share my thoughts about Prima Latina! 

Miss Grace and I have been working on prefixes and suffixes all year long this year. While it's not standard for her year, I thought it might be helpful for her reading, as she is still behind due to her dyslexia. She is still making progress and the word work has really helped with vocabulary, and recognizing word sound groups. So I was really interested to see if working on Latin, which of course is the basis for so much of our language, would also work in helping her learn to 'diagram' words to discover their meaning AND pronunciation, therefore helping her to read 'up'. 

The Prima Latina complete set comes with 6 components:

- An audio CD which includes pronunciation direction for each lesson and four beautiful hymns from  Lingua Angelica

-Student workbook with 25 lessons

-Teacher manual that follows along with Student Workbook, and has answers

- 3 disc DVD set with comprehensive teaching by Leigh Lowe, including recitation & review, vocabulary practice, and explanation of derivatives,tenses and more

- A set of Latina Christiana I Flashcards, which include every word in Prima Latina, so they can serve 2 different courses (something your budget will love!)

Prima Latina is structured to teach basic, but important English and Latin grammar concepts, along with Latin vocabulary words. By using learned words in phrases in sayings, prayers, and hymns kids not only learn grammar structure for Latin, but also a way to USE the words they are learning! You get 25 lessons that can easily be broken down into weekly units. The prayers are added to weekly, so your child will hear and SEE how they are progressing.

I would highly recommend listening to the pronunciation CD FIRST, unless your Latin is great, before you try to go over any lessons with your child.Otherwise, you might get a couple of funny looks, such as the giggly one Miss Grace gave me! LOL. We started out on the first lesson with  my listening to the CD, then introducing and going through the lesson to her, then her listening to the CD, then seeing how much of the lesson review she could complete, without assistance. And then she watched the video for that lesson, and then we worked on flashcards. BUT.....

That really wasn't a practical way for HER to learn! Some ingrained habits REALLY die hard, and we are total opposites in how we learn. So for the second lesson, we swapped it around and I let her watch the video FIRST (after I had listened to the CD and knew what words were new), and then helped her through the workbook pages. I was surprised at how much she really seemed to get from the videos, in doing it this way. But then she is more of a visual child, and the videos helped her tie pronunciation to the word's spelling much easier. She also quite likes Leigh Lowe as an instructor, saying that her pacing was good- she didn't go to fast, and it was easy to keep up with her, and "no funny accent" to deal with (says the kids who sounds like she could pass for a Georgia peach crossed with a redneck, just sayin'...LOL). Note: You can also purchase a Prima Latina Basic Set, with includes ONLY the Manual, workbook and CD, but I highly recommend getting the DVD for YOUR peace of mind, and greater learning for your child. 

So once she finished the video, the workbook seemed quite easy for her, and she was able to complete all the pages pretty quickly. As a mother and teacher, I like how parts of speech, aka GRAMMAR is included, and not just with Latin. Homeschoolers love it when curricula crosses multiple disciplines, and this one does it very sneakily, that kids won't realize how much ENGLISH grammar they are learning too! As you can see the questions are very easy-there is not major critical thinking here-rather it is all dealing with answering with the info your child has JUST learned, Depending on the type of week we were having (March is Irish Dancing MADNESS for her, and Spring Break gets thrown in there too), there were quite a few weeks of 'block days' where she completed her Latin lesson for the week in 2 days. But because the series is aimed at younger kids, it is quite doable that way.

So what we did after she finished the weekly section was to pull the flash cards for the words she had learned, and then I pulled 2 or 3 more, that were NOT part of the lesson, but shared a root word we had worked on during the year, to see if she could figure it out as well. now she just got to the 5th lesson, so she is working on her review and will take her test later this week (there is a test after every 5 lessons). She already has her cards lined up to study them, before she takes the test! And this from a child who has always HATED (and I DO mean HATED!!!)  flashcards! But she loves using these cards and testing what she remembers. I was actually quite thrilled to pull out the month cards ahead of schedule, and see her say wait "that's right, Julius Ceasar added and changed the months around", so December is really the 10th month in Latin, cause Dec means 10". Don't you LOVE it when kids remember their history? LOL

I love how the Teacher Manual includes all of the workbook pages, and has the answers RIGHT there on each section, but in green, so it's easy to tell at a glance what the answer should be (if you can't remember!). No having to go back and forth, looking to the back of the book or the end of a chapter to find the answers! I do wish that the Teacher's Manual was also spiral bound like the student book, so it would lay flat and take up less space on worktable/lap, but that is my only complaint about the set! And if you feel like you do need more help with making a lesson plan, you can purchase them from Memoria as well!

You can also purchase the workbooks separately, if you have multiple children using the same course, so they can each work at their own pace. And because each level of the memoria Latin series builds upon the previous one, your child's Latin vocabulary keeps getting re-enforced and stronger! If you have a child that wants to go into any of the sciences/medical fields, their knowing Latin will be a HUGE benefit to them, as they will be able to break down and understand new (VERY long) words as they come up. Miss Grace had decided she wanted to take Sign Language as her language component in high school, but now she wants to keep going with Latin, and have it as one of her electives! We'll see how that goes, but based on how it's helping her so far with her reading, I have to agree it might be a great thing!

Memoria Press also offers additional classical education courses in 

Traditional Spelling , Traditional Spelling II and Music Appreciation I (which looks at some really great classical composers and their works!). My fellow reviewers are also checking out some of those courses as well. Click on the picture below and you can see all of our reviews, for the different products:

Be sure to check out Memoria Press on their different social media pages for info on their Sodalitas Gathering in July, find out more about their Online Academy, and special discounts: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube!