Posted on 09/23/2009 11:08:25 AM PDT by Tired of Taxes
The Free Republic Homeschoolers’ Forum is an annual thread where homeschoolers share tips and talk about curriculum.
Included on this year’s forum:
GET STARTED HOMESCHOOLING
This year, in response to requests from other parents, we have put together a guide for anyone interested in homeschooling. (See below.)
HOMESCHOOL RESOURCES (in alphabetical order)
Scroll down for the latest list of educational resources recommended by homeschoolers on Free Republic. Corrections and updates were made to the previous list. Links to any product or website no longer available were deleted. Then the recommendations made last year were added. Also, a list of links to resources right here on Free Republic has been expanded under Free Republic Library. As always, feel free to share advice with other homeschoolers in the comments following on this thread.
This will be the final list. Thank you to all who have contributed! If you would like to add more recommendations, please add them in the comments section.
CONGRATULATIONS to all homeschooled students who have graduated this year! Many blessings to you and your families! May you enjoy continued success.
A big THANK YOU to Jim Robinson and to all who make Free Republic work.
I curious if any of you have tried the new Rosetta Stone Latin for homeschooling yet. We are working with a Classical Conversations group and just learning the declensions and conjugations this year but I'm interested in moving a bit faster on our own. Since it's so expensive I'd like to see some feedback from anyone that has tried it first.
My husband just recently installed Rosetta Stone onto our computer, but we haven’t tried it yet. It’s supposed to be an excellent language program, but I don’t even know if the program we have covers Latin. I guess I’ll find out soon... In the meantime, maybe someone else here has tried it...?
Thank you all for the information and input on this thread.
There’s a homeschool parent asking for advice in post #61 above. Maybe someone can help: Has anyone here used Rosetta Stone Latin?
Enjoy this year with your son!
If it’s expensive, I’m against it! Consider an economical used item on ebay or amazon.
Most of the Latin resources we’ve used for homeschooling, came from my mom’s collection and go back many years. My favorite was Using Latin, a textbook from the 1950’s. Latin for Americans was even older, and also great. Ecce Romani is wonderful, newer, and more expensive.
Where newer is usually better, is in Biblical Greek.
Two cents more: Latin tends to bog down in the second year. Expect to have challenges to keep it interesting, and study Roman history and culture along with it.
Oops! How could I forget youtube?
ALWAYS check youtube.com for educational videos. Something new there all the time. Plenty of Latin language enrichment, and it’s free.
I heard Rosetta Stone is the best.
However, we can’t afford it!
We use Latina Christiana. It’s cheaper and has DVDs
A “non-religious” curriculum with a long and honored history is Calvert School. I believe they started during the polio epidemic geared towards kids that had to stay hospitalized/in iron lungs etc.
The Calvert School goes back to the end of the 19th century, and has been used by folks who have had traditional schools unavailable to them, like missionaries in foreign countries, folks whose work requires extensive travel with family, etc.
We used the Calvert School curriculum with both our sons for a number of years.
My wife told me that they're planning to bring out a high school curriculum.
sitetest
It is what you make of it. My older son started with the Rosetta Stone Latin in sixth grade. We supplemented it with Latina Christiana. Between sixth and seventh grades, he taught himself a year of high school Latin pretty much on his own. The following year, the local Catholic high school invited him to take Latin II during his eighth grade year (to give them a year to persuade him to attend full-time in ninth grade, which he eventually did).
This summer, we got him Rosetta Stone Hebrew, and he learned a bit of the language over the course of a couple of months.
So, it worked out well for him.
My younger son has been using Rosetta Stone for German for a little over a year. He's not quite as committed as the older guy, and at this point knows very little German.
sitetest
Thanks for this link, it helped me a lot.
I agree with you on the Ecce Romani, it is a wonderful book. My high schooler is currently on his 3rd year of Latin, and he used Ecce in 7th grade, in private school, and is now using it again in 9th grade, in public school. It seems like a much more interesting way to teach Latin than just memorizing a list of vocabulary words. I'm trying to locate a used copy of the first book at my local home school store but so far I've not been able to find it.
I will keep looking for cheaper alternatives.
Have you looked at Wheelock? It is the standard introductory text used in colleges. You can get it inexpensively used.
Congratulations on deinstitutionalizing your son and your family.
(Im sure you already know this) Not only is 4H a club but they also sell unit studies on 54 different topics (some farm related, some not.) I didnt check the prices on all of them but the ones I did sell for $15 to $25 dollars.
Some Latin study sites for ya!
http://artemis.austincollege.edu/acad/cml/rcape/latin/01index.html
http://www.textkit.com
Thanks for the oldfashionededucation.com link, Frogtacos. It looks like a good find.
Regarding 4-H, I have considered buying some of their curriculum materials, but I never actually did. Here’s the link I’ve looked at:
http://www.4-hmall.org/curriculum.aspx
There are some interesting ideas there, for example, Geospatial. I also remember 4-H having a robotics curriculum, too, but I don’t see it there now.
For those of you who are interested in praying, here is a prayer request for Chris Klicka.
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/chrisklicka
Chris has been battling MS for many years and is not doing well at the moment.
That was a very sad letter to read. My heartfelt prayers for the entire Klicka family, and friends as they travel down this path...
I join in their request to praise God for Chris’ life — he has helped SO MANY to successfully do what they feel called to do for their children.
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