First Form Latin – Reviews and Complaints

Have you been considering First Form Latin for teaching your kids latin? First Form Latin is a new system created for use with students in 5th-12th grade, or younger learners who have finished Latina Christiana 1.

First Form Latin is the 1st in a collection of 4 grammar centered Latin textbooks. It is perfectly designed for beginning students or student who have had some Latin courses and who are in 5th – 9th grade.

This particular edition covers the six indicative active tenses of the first two verb conjugations, five noun declensions, first and second declension adjectives and 185 new vocabulary words.

This program is offered through Memoria Press, a company that specilizes in curriculum homeschoolers and private schools can use to give their children a classical education. It is ran by the family of Cheryl Lowe, who also created Prima Latina and Latina Christiana latin courses.

What I love is that Memoria Press has given families like men, with absolutely no latin background a way to teach our kids what we wish we would have been. In conjunction with the teachers manual and DVDs it is simple to teach and implement.

The DVD literally does the teaching for you. Don’t think that you cannot learn latin right along with your child, I am! You get plent of drill, review and assessments to make sure your student is mastering the material.

The private school that is attached to Memoria Press, called Highlands Latin School completes First Form in 4th grade, Second Form in 5th grade and Third Form in 6th grade. I am not sure if they go with Fourth form after that or go straight into Henle.

Overall, First Form Latin is a fantastic beginning Latin curriculum for middle-school or mature grammar stage students, even if they have never studied latin before. It is more rigorous and mature than Latina Christiana so if your child is still young you may want to start there before moving to this one.

In addition to the teachers’ manual and student workbook you can get the DVDs, pronunciation CD and even flashcards to help with the memorization.

I probably don’t need to sell you on the importance of teaching latin to your kids, you wouldn’t be looking up this review otherwise. First Form is the aboslute best latin program on the market for 4th grade and up.