in pursuit of wild things

The Crew recently received the opportunity to review several interesting homeschooling products from Laurelwood Books. This company has so many wonderful things I had a hard time choosing. Since I could not decide I opened the decision up to my kids and they were the most intrigued by the Latin readers and accompanying workbooks. They chose Olim, Once Upon a Time in Latin, Reader II and Workbook II.

Olim, Once Upon a Time in Latin is a series of six Latin readers and workbooks. These are designed for grades two through five or thereabouts. No prior Latin experience is required for any of the readers. They also have a Latin Derivatives book that can be uses alongside the Olim series. Latin grammar is taught in the workbooks with simple exercises like matching, fill-in the blank, and vocabulary exercises in English and Latin. Every few lessons there is a Digging Deeper” section in the workbooks. These sections go over derivatives, verb tense, infinitives, cases and other bits of grammar. Answers are provided in the back of the book. The front of the workbook has a pronunciation guide and list of Roman Numerals. The teacher note explains the importance of endings in the Latin language.

The workbook also had a “Digging for Treasure” section for each story. These were marked by a shovel and contained clues for decoding a Bible verse. At the end of each story my daughter was able to learn a verse in Latin and translate it into English herself.

Our reader contained three stories written first in English and then in Latin. Nearly every page had vocabulary words, grammar key and translations in the margins. The stories also had several lovely illustrations that worked as visual aids much like other early readers. The front of the book contained a helpful “how to use this curriculum” page, pronunciation guide and list of Roman Numerals.

Our reader contained two stories from the bible and a fable. My oldest son is the most interested in learning Latin and he expressed interest in obtaining the rest of the readers to use alongside his Latin course (Visual Latin). As a seventh grader the workbooks are too easy for him but the readers would be useful for extra translation practice. My daughter worked through several of the lessons and reader on her own. She liked that the works was not hard and she enjoyed the ability to read and translate a story in Latin. I liked that the lessons were short enough to fit our Charlotte Mason approach to education

Other than helping her to pronounce a few words the curriculum

was mostly hands off for me. The reader always directed her to the proper pages to be done in the workbook after reading a section. She always managed to get her lessons done in fifteen to twenty minutes each day.

I thought this was a great curriculum for an early introduction to Latin.

The folks at Laurelwood Books have generously provided a discount code for my readers.  For a 20% discount just use the code blogger 121. The code is good until August 15 2016.

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