Latin Verbs: To Infinitives and Beyond! Book I is the first of a series of three books for learning Latin verbs. Books II and III should be available by early 2018. The author of Latin Verbs is also the author of the Olim: Once Upon a Time in Latin series. While Latin Verbs is not a required resource for the Olim series, it should be very helpful. However, it may also be used profitably alongside most other Latin programs that don’t already have built in recitation, practice, and review of verbs.
Latin Verbs covers 34 commonly-used verbs and should take about 35 weeks to complete. Students able to move at a faster pace might finish the book in as few as 11 weeks. Books II and III will teach entirely new sets of verbs.
Students learn the four principal parts of each verb, although the book does not require them to recite the English translations of the four principal parts. The course concentrates on conjugations for the 34 verbs, teaching only the present tense and the active voice. In Book I, students are introduced to verbs from all four conjugations as well as some irregular verbs.
Daily recitation is the most important learning strategy used, and there is a section of recitation pages to make it easy to quickly practice both the principal parts and the conjugations of the verbs.
The first part of the book explains how it is to be used. One new verb is introduced each week, and review is continual. Students will gradually work up to the point where they are reciting 12 verbs at a time. At that point, you can begin dropping a previously-learned verb and adding a new one. For students working at a faster pace, you will introduce and drop verbs more quickly.
The bulk of the book consists of workbook pages. Students will work on recitation of each verb for a full week before tackling workbook activities. That means that there are no workbook activities the first week.
For each verb there is a two-page spread of activities that include work with conjugations, translations (both Latin to English and English to Latin), chanting, and writing sentences. Check-off lists are included for student completion of the workbook activities for each verb. Frequent review pages along with the structured oral recitation help students retain familiarity with all of the verbs they have learned.
An answer key is at the back of the book. The book is not reproducible. Each student will need his or her own book.
While the pronunciation chart in the book is for classical Latin, you can easily substitute ecclesiastical pronunciation.
Latin Verbs requires that someone works with a student through the daily recitations. Students as young as third or fourth grade can easily participate in the recitations. Workbook pages require more facility with both English and Latin grammar, so younger students might need a great deal of assistance while older students up through about eighth grade level should be able to work independently. I expect that the combination of recitation with workbook activities should work very well as a reinforcement for learning Latin verbs.
