Tidbits
• For those of you who wrote about wondering whether to go with the Nook or the Kindle, here’s a good article comparing the two: Which E-Reader Is Best?
• Amazon is offering a year of free Amazon Prime membership to college students. That means free two-day shipping on most items. The student must have a .edu email address to be eligible.
• I enjoyed this article (and so many others) by Tom Hodgkinson at The Idler: “Discover How to Intersperse Loafing with Latin.” His reasons and approach are markedly similar to mine. Have any of you tried the Cambridge Latin Course he mentions? We’ve enjoyed materials by Memoria Press and Classical Academic Press.
• Speaking of The Idler, these posts at Farm School and Mental Multivitamin prompted me to put Hodgkinson’s The Idle Parent on hold at the library. I read the first chapter yesterday via Kindle’s “sample this” feature, giggled my way through, read various bits aloud to Scott, forgave Hodgkinson for scorning the Wii, and enjoyed his Idle Parent’s Manifesto. “Play more, work less”: well, yes.
Katya says:
I can recommend it highly.
I used Cambridge Latin in middle school and still remember some of the stories and pictures many years later.
I am planning on using it with my son next year (5th grade).
On July 16, 2010 at 6:26 am
Sarah N. says:
I haven’t used a Kindle or a Nook but the Kindle for iPhone app is my favorite of the readers I’ve tried.
My daughters are too young for cambridge Latin but my 6yo and I started working through Minimus (written as a prescursor to the Cambridge Latin course) last spring and she loves it. I’ll have to check out that article. Becky from Farm School also inspired me to request The Idle Parent.
On July 16, 2010 at 7:10 am
Teri says:
I’ve just ordered the Cambridge — I’ll let you know what we think. We’ve worked with Minimus I and II, the Classical Academic Press books (which we found uninspiring), and the Learning Latin through Mythology book, which was ok but not systematic.
Hands down the very best starting Latin book out there, though, is Getting Started With Latin. Seriously. It’s amazing. The lessons are brief, but they really get the grammar across through exercises and examples. I took two years of college Latin, and I learned more about how declension works in this book than I ever learned in college. And my daughter was easily translating very complex sentences (i.e. The girls go with the women from the beach to the school, but they would prefer to go with their friends from the beach to the forest.) within a very few months.
On July 16, 2010 at 9:43 am
Teri says:
Oops. I should add that no one is paying me to say this. I bought all those resources on my own. But the Getting Started book is the one that worked.
On July 16, 2010 at 9:44 am
Ben Lee says:
Thanks for the mention Melissa! : )
Cheers,
-Ben
On July 16, 2010 at 5:19 pm
janewilk says:
Cambridge Latin rocks! I had it in my Latin classes 7th-9th grades and really loved it (having a wonderful teacher didn’t hurt, either) and I recently bought it for my daughter (rising 8th grade). She loves it, too, and often asks if we can “do Latin” together even though we are not formally working through the books. She knows a tremendous amount of Latin just because the books make it so darn fun!
On July 16, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Susan C. says:
Thanks for the tip on the Amazon Prime student discount. I buy the majority of my textbooks from there. Thanks!
On July 17, 2010 at 8:22 am
Elizabeth H. says:
I learnt Latin at high school using the Cambridge Latin Course (complete with cassettes with bizarrely intoned dialogue). It was good, but the teachers had to provide a lot of background re the grammar which is expected to be intuited rather than spelt out.
I worked through Minimus with my daughter (9) and now she’s learning with a Proper Teacher who’s chosen the Oxford Latin Course — which the latter says is better than the Cambridge.
On July 19, 2010 at 2:51 pm