Review Visual Latin

Latin has always been something that I have wanted to add to our homeschool.  It was also something that I was a little daunted by.  And, quite frankly, I wasn't sure that I could even find the time to add in another subject.

But when the opportunity to review Visual Latin came up, I began to get excited.  It looked like a program that would be totally doable for our homeschool.

About Visual Latin

Visual Latin is not your typical Latin study.  The creators  admit that up front.  From the website:

  Visual Latin is a rather unusual Latin curriculum. For instance, we think:

• It’s better to make students laugh than yawn.
• Shorter videos teach more effectively than longer ones.
• Small successes lead to big successes.
• Children like reading Latin more than memorizing it.

How does Visual Latin work?  Well, I'll let our Latin teacher explain it himself.

Visual Latin | A Quick Explanation from Compass Cinema on Vimeo.

Our Experience

In a word, our experience has been WONDERFUL!!  We are just loving this program.

We do a lesson a week, which takes three days to complete.  We start by watching a short video where we are taught a new grammatical concept.  The videos are our favorite part.  Dwayne is always cracking us up.

After he introduces the new concept, he shows how to use the new concept within sentences.  Warning!  These might make you laugh too.

Then he practices translating "with" us and will often read aloud from the Latin Vulgate Bible.  It was a pleasant surprise to both of us, how quickly we could understand a lot of what he was reading.  Especially when you consider that we have not been memorizing vocabulary lists AT ALL.   So cool!

The final step to our lesson, is a short worksheet.
Here Mackenzie practices reading and translating
Latin following the concepts taught in the video.

Start to finish, the total lesson runs about 15 minutes.  It's that easy!  And fun to boot.

My Final Thoughts

I love this program.  It's easy to use, fun, quick, and my daughter is learning to read Latin.  We are 6 weeks in and we have no intentions of turning back now.  I was so impressed with the program that I have already purchased the additional 20 lessons that we needed to complete level 1

If you still aren't sure if it's for you, guess what?  You can try SIX lessons for FREE!  How awesome is that?  Just click HERE for 4 intro lessons and the first two lessons of level 1.  Don't skip the intro lessons!  They are chock full of great stuff.

And guess what?  You can even do Latin "on the road" as the videos are compatible with iTunes so you can load them on to your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.  Super handy for our family as we are Apple junkies.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

    *Super easy to implement
    *Lessons are short
    *My daughter asks to do Latin.  This is not a boring language program.
    *The instructor is extremely likable.  We'd like to have him for Thanksgiving.
    *You can purchase dvds or downloads
    *Able to use on iPads and iPad Touch
    *Inexpensive
    *We now know what filch means and can use it English and Latin sentences.

Cons:
 
    *We don't have to memorize endless lists of boring vocabulary.  Oh wait, that's not a con for us.
    *I can't think of any cons.

F.Y.I.

Website:  http://www.visuallatin.com/
Ages:  9 and up. But if you have a younger child who's a strong reader, they could probably do it.
Click for Sample Lessons
Cost:  $25.00 and up.  Click HERE for complete pricing info.

Disclaimer: I received the first ten lessons of Visual Latin as part of the Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew.  All opinions are my own.

Click the Crew banner to read more reviews of this wonderful product.