Visual Latin Review
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Visual Latin
Latin. Seriously. Sounds boring and difficult. Definitely not something for my 12 year old. She would hate it. I put her into a Spanish co-op class instead.
Turns out learning lists of Spanish vocabulary words was pretty boring. After a year, my daughter could only tell me a few words that she remembered and couldn’t read any Spanish text we came across.
This whole time my friend Stef kept telling me how great Visual Latin was and how we needed to try it. “Your daughter will love it!”  blah. blah. blah. So, when Spanish class ended in April, she hooked me up with a copy of Visual Latin 1 from Compass Classroom for my daughter to try. Why not?
Why Study Latin?
In the intro video, the instructor gives reasons why someone should study what some people consider a “dead” language.
- Latin opens the door to other languages.
- Helps to know how other languages fit together.
- Makes learning the romance languages easier.
- 90% of the English multi-syllable words are Latin derivatives (including LOTS of science words!!)
- Learning Latin changes the way you think.
What is Visual Latin?
Visual Latin consists of a video of a teacher and printable worksheets. We started with the first 10 lessons. The lessons are divided into 3 parts each, so essentially 30 lessons. The videos are set in more of a conversational style and less of a lecture. Humor mingled in with the study keeps the viewer’s attention and makes the study fun.
I let my daughter watch the videos on her own and set her own pace. She watched the intro videos the first day (I really thought it would be her last) and announced to me that she really liked the intro and the teacher. She was excited to get started with Latin.
From that day on, she did each 3 part lesson. I told her she only needed to do one part each day, but she loved it so much that she asked to do all three. She completed the lessons in 10 days. Within those days, I kept track of her progress through the printable worksheets. She was actually writing and translating Latin! It was so much more than learning vocabulary words. She was understanding the language.
We’ll be downloading the next set of lessons very soon.
UPDATE:: We did slow down the pace as we got farther into the curriculum to ensure that all the new vocabulary was being learned.
You can download 5 Visual Latin lessons  at the Compass Classroom Visual Latin website. See for yourself why we love Visual Latin. Visual Latin 1 and 2 are available for purchase in download or DVD form.