I received this question:
I’m looking for an online Latin course that is somewhat comparable to Jenney’s First Year Latin. Would your Visual Latin compare at all? My daughter is going into the 7th grade and has had two years of Grammar Latin at a classical school. She will not be able to attend the school this next year but we are trying to stay with the curriculum as best we can. Please let me know if Visual Latin would be appropriate for her level. Thank you.
Here is my reply:
Your question brings back a lot of memories. I started learning Latin with Jenny’s Latin. At 23 years old, I asked a local high-school teacher if I could join her Latin class. Stayed in class until I was 26. Since I was homeschooled, this was my only high-school experience. Had two kids in high-school. Heh. 🙂
I actually relied on Jenny’s Latin quite a bit when I was writing Visual Latin.
Here’s the thing. All of the Latin texts teach the same thing. They all teach Latin. But, most of them, including Jenny’s Latin start with the complicated Latin verb system. When I wrote Visual Latin, I flipped the order. I taught the as many of the easy concepts as I could first. I started with nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs. That fills much of Visual Latin 1.
In Visual Latin 2, I focused on the more complicated concepts like verbs.
So, here is what is going to happen if you go with Visual Latin. Visual Latin 1 is going to feel quite easy for your daughter. She will not run into much difficulty until lesson 20, or so. (There are 30 lessons in Visual Latin 1 and 30 lessons in Visual Latin 2.) By Visual Latin 2, she will find herself increasingly challenged. But, in the end, yes. She will learn in Visual Latin what she was learning in Jenny’s Latin.
I hope this helps!
