First Form Latin - question about pace

[janahigh]

First Form Latin is a breath of fresh air. When we started, my 10-year-old son said, "I really like Latin - it was just that other book I didn't like!" We were both greatly relieved, to say the least!

We are now 8 lessons in; the material on verbs is all new to him, but the rest of the course will be review. (What we used over the last 1.5 years covered all of Latin grammar...we had covered all of nouns and adjectives before starting First Form.) My son is getting bored, even though verbs are completely new to him. Is there something I should add? I'm nervous about speeding up, but I'm afraid he'll lose interest (and get lazy!) without a challenge. It's a fine line. :-)

I'm grateful for any advice you could give...
Jana High

[tanya]

Jana,

I'm glad you are enjoying First Form. Since your son has already had a good grounding in the Latin grammar, you might want to move more quickly through the material that is review. Maybe for the noun lessons, you could start with the unit reviews and see how he does. If he does well on those lessons, then move on. If he misses quite a bit when working in the workbook, I'd go back and make him do the lessons. If not, then he has indeed mastered the material and can take the unit test and move on. He may find that he needs more review than he thinks he does. Also, I'm sure there is some new vocabulary that he will need to master.

If you finish First Form in less than a year, that is fine. You can move on to Second Form. But you really do need to make sure he has mastered the grammar before moving on. It will make his Latin life easier in the long run!

I hope this helps.

Tanya

[janahigh]

In our other curriculum we learned 6 cases, including vocative. Going to 5 is tripping us up a bit. Would it be best to add the vocative case to First Form, since we already know it, or should we adjust? Will the vocative case be added in at some point?

Thank you,
Jana

[clowe]

The vocative case is not added until Third Form. If you are used to reciting the vocative case then go ahead and do it. It is usually the last case so it is easy to add or drop. Older texts usually include it and newer ones usually omit it and just teach it as an exception rule which is what First Form does. The rule is that the vocative is always the same as the nominative except for us nouns of the 2nd declension, where the ending is e.

Sorry this anwer was delayed.