Monday Musings for 1/21/2019

So over this past weekend, my husband has spent a large portion of his time rearranging our living room and trying to get things better organized.  With three days of our week devoted to music, this means we have a lot of instruments in our home.  We need a place to keep them as well as places to practice.  Since there are 6 of us who play instruments and four of us play more than one, there are quite a few instruments in our home.  So watch for me to be sharing how the living room looks once we get everything situated the way we want them to be.

Also we are just really getting back into our homeschool routine, which means either my children or I want to change some things up.  For our sixteen-year-old daughter, we are going to be adding French, which we found on the Schoolhouseteachers.com website.  I love the ease I am able to find what I am looking for on this site.  If you want to read a review I wrote for Schoolhouseteachers back in January of 2017, click here.  This site provides everything a homeschooling family could need or want.  Be watching in the next few weeks because I will be sharing when the Home School Review Crew goes live with the reviews of this program for this year.

And speaking of the Home School Review Crew, I am pleased to say I will be participating on the Home School Review Crew again this year.  So be watching for upcoming reviews.

So what is going on in your world today?  I would love to hear from you.

Review of Memoria Press’ Second Form Latin

When we first began our homeschooling journey many years ago, one of my main desires was to find curriculum that provided a Classical Christian education. Memoria Press makes classical education easier with Second Form Latin.  We have used a variety of curriculum choices from Memoria Press through the years, but I specifically wanted the Second Form Latin for myself.  I have a strong desire to learn other languages and Latin is at the top of my list.  I know building a strong foundation with Latin is important.  Second Form Latin is designed for students in grades 5-10.

With our Second Form Latin kit, we received eight components which include: the student text, the student workbook, the Quizzes and Test booklet, the Teacher manual, a Pronunciation CD,  a Teacher Key, flashcards and instructional DVDs. The course contains five units which are broken down into 26 lessons plus a review for each lesson.  There is a pre-test on day 4 of each lesson.  If the student shows mastery on this pre-test, the lesson is considered complete.  However, if the student does not show mastery, the students should review and restudy the materials and take the quiz again on day 5.

A typical week will include for day 1:  Recitation, teaching the lesson, and workbook section 1.  Day 2 includes recitation and workbook section 2.  DAy 3 includes recitation and workbook section 3.  Day 4 includes Recitation, Workbook Section 4, Orill Drill in the text, and the Pre-Test.  I found this schedule quite manageable even as a homeschooling mom with other responsibilities.

The student textbook contains the background information for the lessons.  Each lesson is on a two-page spread with the pages facing each other, so there is no need to flip pages.  Also, the pages are free of unnecessary information or other distractions.  So it helps keep the student focuses.

Each lesson has a segment on the DVD which will last anywhere from 15-20 minutes.  These segments provide a great opportunity to listen to pronunciations and to ensure the student understands what it is being taught.  From prior experience with other products from Memoria Press, these DVDs provide wonderful instructional information.  These DVDs include 3 discs with 8.5 hours of instruction.  The explanations are provided by former Highlands Latin School Teacher Glen Moore.  According to the Memoria Press website’s description of the DVDs for Second Form Latin, “The DVDs also include helpful on-screen notes, illustrations, diagrams, a full First Form– Second Form recitation, “Latin parties” (Glen’s version of unit reviews), and more!”

Next comes the Student Workbook.  This provides opportunities for the students to practice vocabulary, translations, declensions (which in the grammar of Latin, Greek, and other languages) refers to the variation of the form of a noun, pronoun or adjective that identifies its grammatical case, number, and gender), conjugation practice, word study and grammar, and more.  I found these assignments to be very easy to complete and the directions were easy to follow.

Then there is the Quizzes and Tests booklet.  This provides a quiz for each lesson along with a review for each unit.  Here are some sample pages.  I found these quizzes to be a good review of the material being covered.  Because I was the one doing this course, I can not say how long it took me to complete these.  I tended to work on them as time allowed me to rather than focusing on completing everything in one session.

The vocabulary cards provide a great way to review words, meanings and more.  I recommend finding a way to keep the cards together and organized.  One way would be by punching holes in these cards and put a ring through the hole to keep them together.  Or another way would be to put them in some kind of box.  I started off by using rubber bands but it did not really seem to work well.

There is also a Teacher Key which contains the answers to all of the Workbook questions, Quzzes and Test questions.  This provides a quick and easy method for checking a student’s work.  When we first began studying Latin many years ago, I had not taken any formal Latin courses, so I found the Teacher Key to be a great resource.

You can find Memoria Press on Social Media at:

• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/memoriapress/
• Twitter:  https://twitter.com/MemoriaPress    Tag:   @MemoriaPress
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/memoriapress/
• Instagram:   https://www.instagram.com/memoriapress/          Tag:   @memoriapress
• Google+:  https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Memoriapress1  Tag:  +Memoriapress1
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/memoriapress/
  

I recommend you check out Second Form Latin by Memoria Press along with all of their other resources which include such courses as Traditional Spelling I, Music Appreciation, and other levels of Latin for yourself.  If you would like to read other reviews by other members of the Home School Review Crew, click here or on the graphic below.

Review for Memoria Press’ First Form Greek Complete Set

Memoria Press is my go to for classical Christian homeschool curriculum so we were so excited to receive the First Form Greek Complete Set.  Through the years we have used several over their Latin programs including First Form Latin, so this seemed like it would be a good fit for our family.  The set includes:  the Student Text, Teacher Manual, a Student workbook, a Quizzes and Tests booklet, a teacher key for the workbook as well as the Quizzes and Tests booklet, a pronunciation CD, Vocabulary flashcards, and DVDS with the lessons on it.

 

My husband is an ordained Primitive Baptist preacher and our oldest son plans on becoming a Youth pastor, so we felt this program would be an excellent way to introduce Biblical Greek to our entire family.  Several of the churches we have attended have utilized the Greek language in either sermons or other teaching situations.  So we felt like this would be an excellent subject to learn with an excellent program.  And this program does not disappoint in that regard.

Ideally, students need to have two years of Latin instruction plus completed Memoria Press’ Greek Alphabet book.  Having done this without the Greek Alphabet book from Memoria Press, I have to state I definitely agree with that recommendation.  This is definitely a course better suited for high school students.  Parents need to be prepared to spend time with their children when completing the lessons.  The teacher’s manual does an excellent job of telling parents exactly what to say.

My children are ages 14, 16, 18 and 20 who did this program.  I have to say they were not particularly excited by the videos.  But the information was presented in a clear manner.  We wound up spending time reviewing the Greek Alphabet prior to beginning the First Form Greek materials.  Spending extra time on Lesson 1 is given as a viable way to introduce the material if you are not familiar with the Greek alphabet.  Each lesson consists of lessons on the DVD, pages in the textbook and pages in the workbook plus the quizzes and possibly tests at the end of the lessons.  The vocabulary cards are used to reinforce words the students are learning and then to review words they have already learned.  Once the video is watched, if there are multiple family members completing the program together, they can work independently on the textbook and workbook pages.  I found that having everyone complete the quizzes at the same time worked best for our family from our experiences with the Latin programs.

Here are some pictures of the textbook, workbooks, and teacher manuals.  On the introductory lesson, my youngest son even took the time to write his name in Greek.

While having experience with Greek is not a necessity for the parent-teacher, I have to say I think it definitely is helpful.  From our experience, I would also state the parents definitely need to be plan on being involved.  Using this program in a co-op or group setting definitely would be a plus.  This way the students have someone else to interact with and discuss lessons with regularly.  Plus it gives the parents someone else to help teach and explain the lessons.  This program is wonderful for those looking to enrich their knowledge of the Greek language for Biblical study purposes.  This program is rich in the classical education tradition and demonstrates all the necessary characteristics of a classical Christian curriculum.

If you wish to connect with the company, you can find Memoria Press at the following Social Media Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memoriapress/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/memoriapress/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MemoriaPress @MemoriaPress
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/memoriapress/

If you would like to read more reviews from the Homeschool Review crew, click here or on the graphic below.