Monday, February 19, 2007

Latin Vocab

Drama Princess and I practice her Latin vocabulary every morning at breakfast. We have each word on an index card and the card holder is divided into the days of the week. Nouns are written in orange, verbs in blue, phrases in green, adjectives in red. That has nothing to do with anything other than appeasing the OCD in me. Don't judge me.

The vocab is evenly divided among the Monday-Friday tabs. She knows most of the words by heart now and only requires a refresher once a week. For example, one of the words for today was dangerous (periculosus) and since she got it right we will not discuss it again until next Monday. If she got it wrong it would go into the 'Practice everyday tab'. This is reserved for vocab that she has just been given and therefore does not know them yet or for words she has forgotten. We revisit that section every Monday and if she correctly remembers them, they get sorted into the once a week section. Today she pared down her everyday vocab from 20 to 4.

Now before you think about sending Drama Princess a cake with a file in it to escape from her Latin prison, don't worry. It's really not bad. She likes to act out her Latin. With her breakfast foods. Hey, it works for us. Today her vitamins were the actors. Fizzgig made her vitamin growl, which of course signaled to us that it was a monstrum. Cave! Monstrum intrat! Periculosus est! I tell D.P. "Look out! The monster has a sword!" D.P. says "Euge! Monstrum gladius habet!" And then proceeds to beat on her sister's vitamin with her fork. As the story progresses, and I drink my tea, I find ways to insert the vocab of the day into the story and D.P. translates it into Latin. An unintended plus is that Fizzgig has picked up a surprising amount of Latin in the process.

5 comments:

Lisa said...

Damn! You are goooood. Your professional teaching background is showing . . .and I mean that in a good way. :-) You go, girl--get your tab on!

Ab uno disce omnes, Zendra, baby.

("from one, learn all" Used when one specific example illustrates a universal truth. From Virgil's Aeneid.)

Jim Chandler said...

Ego sum non dignus.

--> I am not worthy

(With an implicit "I am not good maker of latin grammar".)

zendra said...

Thank-you both. Oh, wait. Am I perpetuating the blogger co-dependency thing by saying that? :)

Jack's affectation gland said...

Edo cerebrum!

Life throws you surprises! said...

Latin flashbacks........YIKES!