Level: Form III (7th–9th grades), Form IV (10th–12th grades)
Subject(s): Languages—World & Classical, Latin
Description:
Both new and experienced Latin scholars will be challenged in this class where students will read and study a novel written entirely in Latin. Students will enjoy reading about the antics and adventures of a Roman family in the 2nd century A.D. while they learn an impressive amount of vocabulary and grammar through a natural language-learning approach. With twice the vocabulary of many Latin textbooks, Lingua Latina helps students begin to read and speak Latin with ease from the beginning. Lingua Latina is so rich that we will spend two years completing the text.
Advanced Latin students will supplement their studies with additional reading and exercises. All students should plan to spend about an hour a day on Latin homework three or four days per week.
Latin instructor Hannah Phelps, again and again finds herself captivated by the power of language. Having studied Latin for going on ten years, she has also taught Latin and other subjects in homeschool group classes and currently tutors peers through the Houston Baptist University Academic Success Center where she has worked since 2018. Hannah is also a member of the HBU Honors College, and she plans to graduate in May of 2021 with a bachelor of arts in Latin and a minor in writing. She has read and translated selections from The Aeneid, Cicero’s speeches, Seneca’s letters, the Vulgate, and Augustine’s writings, among others. At the Classical Association of the Midwest and South (CAMWS) conference in 2020, she presented her paper “Stilicho: Barbarian Blood in a Roman Heart,” which was one of nine undergraduate papers selected.
Materials:
$45 (beginning Latin scholars)/$72 (advanced latin scholars) supplies fee covers the cost of BHSC-purchased student materials including Hans Ørberg’s Lingua Latina per se illustrata, Pars I: Familia Romana, for all students, and also Exercita Latina: Exercises for Familia Romana and Richie’s Fabulae Faciles for advanced students, as well as other teaching/classroom resources.
Families supply a three-ring binder with lined paper, pencils, colored pencils, and erasers in a pencil pouch.
Hans Ørberg’s Lingua Latina per se illustrata series is the world’s premiere textbook for learning Latin via the Natural Method. Students first learn grammar and vocabulary intuitively through extended contextual reading and an innovative system of marginal notes. It is the only textbook currently available that gives students the opportunity to learn Latin without resorting to translation, but allows them to think in the language. Familia Romana (the main book of Pars I of the Lingua Latina per se illustrata series) contains thirty-five chapters which culminates in readings from classical poets and Donatus’s Ars Grammatica, the standard Latin school text for a millennium. Each chapter is divided into two or three lessons (lectiones) of a few pages each followed by a grammar section (Grammatica Latina) and three exercises (Pensa). Hans Ørberg’s impeccable Latin, humorous stories, and the Peer Lauritzen illustrations, reproduced in full color, make this work a classic. The book also includes a table of declensions, a Roman calendar, and a word index (index vocabulorum).
