IJ's Magic

Latin is the language for people who are serious about their homeschooling.  I've heard of people starting Latin lessons as young as first grade, and hey, if you can teach your kid Latin that young, more power to you.  I, however, could probably say I could barely teach one of our children English in first grade!  And I couldn't even keep my kids interested in Rosetta Stone for more than one week despite the claims that children as young as five years old could use it.

Nevertheless, IJ has to start Latin as part of his classical education.  A workbook I've brought out once a week for my teachable child this school  year is Word Roots.  IJ doesn't really like it and I don't blame him.  This book is not one that you can plunk down in front of your child and expect him to do on his own.  But that is what I have to do sometimes.  IJ is supposed to be learning about Latin prefixes, root words, and suffixes.  He is about half-way through his current book (Beginning Word Roots), so when my favorite homeschool company offered me a free copy of the next book in exchange for a review, I jumped at the chance.

This morning, IJ saw me looking through Word Roots A1 and started to groan.  I mentioned that many of the spells in Harry Potter are based on Latin root words.  He is currently reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  In this book, an evil government employee wants to use Veritaserum potion on students, which is a truth serum.  I pointed out that veri means truth in Latin.  And then I worked a bit of my mama magic and mentioned that maybe his spells would work better if he started using the correct Latin root words.

What the heck is this mess on my floor?

You see, he still believes in magic.  Remember this?  He is right at the end of his time in the magic of childhood.  And this is a rotten time of year to say, "IJ, your magic spells will never work because there is no such thing as magic.  But here are some Santa gifts and it was magic that they appeared when you were sleeping!  But again, there is no such thing as magic."  Nope, I'm not gonna go there this year.

So when I get home from grocery shopping and M and the boys had already left for Taekwondo and found a mess of books on the floor, I was pleased to see this:

His work book (Root Words A1) is opened to the Dictionary of Latin Words in the back of the book.  And next to it was:

He spent a good part of the afternoon creating his own magic spells using the Latin dictionary.  I certainly can't complain about that!

"Help!  I'm stuck to the book!"

It says, "Accio Gluteus Maximus!"

It doesn't really say that, but IJ did ask me if he could use the prefix gymn to take off S's pants!  I'm really looking forward to having some of these spells explained to me!  And I'm hoping that our love for Harry Potter books will translate into exploring Latin further!

Legal Disclosure: As a member of Timberdoodle's Blogger Review Team I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a frank and unbiased review.