So you already know that in our family we study Latin through 11th grade. Why, you ask? Quite simply because I have seen the benefits of learning this beautiful language in our other subjects and in our testing. For us learning Latin has so many benefits that I was thrilled at the opportunity for my girls, Mikayla (10th grade) and Montana (6th grade) and I to try
Picta Dicta Vocabulary Builder from
Roman Roads Media.
You many have heard of Roman Roads Media before from other curricula they publish, like Visual Latin or Old Western Culture. As a company they are renowned for publishing Classical, Christian curriculum for homeschoolers. All of their products combine technology and resources with high quality instruction to help foster a love of learning in your child.
The Picta Dicta Vocabulary Builder is geared towards the middle school through college age students. The classical curriculum focuses on teaching over 1,000 nouns, verbs, adjectives, and propositions used in everyday speaking through pictures, audio pronunciations, definitions and more to help your student learn this thrilling language called Latin.
The full course includes two different tracks, Normal or Easy. The first three learning sections are exactly the same. The difference comes with two additional exercises in the Normal version.You the parent are able to put your child into the appropriate level that is both challenging yet achievable.
The complete program contains 31 chapters that each cover a separate topic.
1 The Map
2 Basic School
3 Basic People and Family
4 Numbers and Useful Adjectives
5 Basic Actions
6 Basic Food and Money
7 Miscellaneous Verbs and Adjectives
8 Basic Travel and Home
9 Basic Prepositions
10 Travel and Transportation
11 Basic Body and Beauty
12 Jewelry and Clothing
13 Shopping
14 The Herdsman
15 More Animals and Outdoors
16 Life and Death
17 Animal and Tree Parts
18 Size
19 Complementary Infinitive
20 Play
21 Anatomy
22 Sickness
23 More Geography
24 War
25 Arms and Battle
26 Time
27 Weather
28 Light
29 More Useful Adjectives
30 More Clothing
31 Washing
Through repetition of audio and visual clues your student will learn between 25-30 vocabulary words through the course of a lesson. Each Chapter has exercises where the student LEARN, CHOOSE, SPELL, FORMS, and TEST FORMS to present the material to be learned. Each of the sections is given a star grade based system with 5 starts being an excellent score.
The program has a See it, Hear it, Understand it philosophy.
See it ~ colorful, hand-drawn illustrations present and teach the Latin vocabulary words. The pictures are simple yet interesting enough to aid in memorization of the word. Perfect for the visual learner.
Hear it ~ For the audio learners out there, the program pronounces the word for each picture as well as using the word in a sentence.
Understand it ~ A helpful dictionary is just a click away if you need the definition of a word. It also includes possible English translations to help you further.
We have been using this with both Mikayla and Montana with great starting results. We’ve had our woes with Latin over the last few years. To the point where it just was not getting done. We have jumped back and forth from one curriculum provider to the next, taking online classes and so forth searching for the right one. The addition of using Picta Dicta Vocabulary Builder with our Latin curriculum has been the missing piece I have been searching for!
The girls have been using the program for 20-30 minutes a day, three times a week on their iPads in addition to their Latin study. At first Montana was on the Normal setting, but we found that to be too challenging for her, especially in the spelling portion, so I bumped her down to the Easy level while Mikayla continued on the Normal level.
I really like that this is such a visual and audio program which suits Mikayla so well. She still struggles at times with comprehension and retention, but this program has been helping her memorize and expand not just her Latin vocabulary but her English one as well. We definitely will be telling all our friends about this curriculum and finishing the complete program for both girls. I plan to have Montana cycle back through the program on the Normal level next school year.
But why study Latin you ask? I’m sure you have heard it said that Latin is a “dead” or “forgotten” language. I think it’s important because Latin helps
“1. Latin teaches English better than English teaches English.
2. The mental discipline Latin instills in students makes it the ideal foreign language to study.
3. Latin is the ideal tool for the transmission of cultural literacy”.
If your goals is a classical education, then studying Latin is a must and Roman Roads Media's Picta Dicta Vocabulary Builder will help you meet that goal. I have enjoyed this Latin classical curriculum so much that I have decided to purchase my 3rd grader a subscription to the Picta Dicta Natural World program. I know that this program will be just as fabulous as the Picta Dicta Vocabulary Builder and money well spent.
But don’t just take my word for it, check out what my CrewMates thought of this program and the other two Classical education curriculum,
Fitting Words Classical Rhetoric (complete program) and
Picta Dicta Natural World reviewed by clicking the banner below.
Format ~ online
Price ~ $79.00, 14 month subscription. Each additional user license $15.00
Ages ~ middle school through college-age
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