Leaping into Latin

I'm not very good at getting started on new projects. I'm a cautious person. Once I get started on a new activity and have the ins-and-outs figured out, I'm fine, but I usually have to force myself to START.

<--This is me trying to get past my own mindblock.

I've always been this way, apparently. My mother tells me that I did not start walking until I was sure that I could do it without falling down...My eldest son is the same in this regard. He gets easily frustrated when he doesn't know how to do something. This aspect of his personality makes homeschooling challenging at times, especially when I'm tempted to get all easily frustrated along with him, instead of patiently encouraging him.

Anyhoo, I've been wanting to get my boys started on learning Latin for a year now. I always have a list of things to do, and Latin always ends up falling off the end of the list, because I know nothing about Latin. I even have a dvd with beginning Latin lessons! You'd think that would be enough of a crutch!

Okay! So... today, we started. I put the dvd into the player and pressed play. (Woo Hoo!!!!) And guess what. We liked it! (After we got over laughing about the teacher smacking her lips open at the beginning of each sentence... Poor woman. She really is a good teacher. I mean, after all, she wrote the Latin primers and is teaching me!) I forced myself to put Latin at the beginning of the day, right after Bible. At this point, I'm thinking that a school day will be successful if we study: Bible (either during our school time, or during our evening family worship), Latin, math, spelling, piano, and spend some time reading. Other subjects such as history and chemistry are still important to me, but I won't let myself feel like a failure if we don't get it accomplished every day. Other things such as swimming lessons and art lessons are outside activities which we have paid for and so will get done without my planning. They just require my driving.

Why Latin? Well, I've decided to ditch English grammar right now and focus on Latin. Learning Latin is a good way of learning English grammar. Actually, instead of summarizing why I want to teach (and learn) Latin, I'll just direct you to this article which says it better I'm sure.