Review: Memoria Press–Latina Christiana (TOS Review)

We had the opportunity to check out Latina Christiana I Complete Set by Memoria Press.  This program is recommended for 3rd – 6th grade levels.  My 8.5 year old son (3rd grade) used the program for this review.  Memoria Press is a Classical Education company.  We follow somewhat of a Classical method (though we are very eclectic), and have used several Memoria Press materials.  This is our first attempt at Latin.

The program consists of  

• Student Book
• Teacher Manual
• Pronunciation CD
• Instructional DVDs
• Flashcards

This is a DVD course, so the lesson is given via DVD, then there are worksheets to go with the lessons.

I have to be honest, we have determined that Latin is not our thing.  This program, however is very well put together, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning Latin.

We used this program about 3-4 days a week during the review period.  My son would watch the video and then work on the worksheet.  We would sometimes revisit the lesson on the next day if he wasn’t able to get all the worksheet problems answered.  We would then review words with the flashcards.  The program is very simple to use, you need not have any experience with Latin to grasp the program.  The Teacher’s Manual has the answers if questions ever arise.

I think this is definitely a solid program.  My son, however, was just not really interested in it.  His favorite part was when he had to list words based off their root words and definitions.  He had fun with this.  He particularly found the root word porta to be fun, and kept using the word porta-potty for the entire day.  But, hey, he remembered the meaning of the root word!  As a matter of fact, if there was a way to just do the root words lesson, I’d be all over that (and I think my son would be too).

The most frustrating thing about the program was that I felt the DVD lessons were too long (and my son thought so too).  Unfortunately, if we stopped a lesson mid way, there was no way to pick it back up where we left off.  No way to skip chapters, or anything like that, you could only start at the beginning of each lesson.  I’m guessing if we had the original remote to our DVD player we could have fast forwarded the lesson to the point we left off, but unfortunately we don’t…so this was an annoyance.  Not the end of the world by any means, but we would have liked to have been able to easily break each lesson up into sections. 

As far as language programs go, Latin is a pretty simple language, pronunciations are not too difficult (where I would feel the need to have a speaking feedback) and it’s a great starting for any of the Latin based languages. 

The Latina Christiana I Complete Set costs $98.90,there is a smaller set available for $41.95, which does not include the DVD or Flashcards.  I feel, however, the DVD is an important part to this curriculum.  Items can also be purchased individually.

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