Learning Greek - A New Homeschool Review

We have use Memoria Press for many of our classical Christian homeschool curriculum, so we were thrilled when we found out we were going to be able to review their First Form Greek Complete Set. No one was more thrilled then my eldest daughter who has been dabbling in trying to learn a few languages over the past two years and Greek was on her list of languages she wanted to learn.

So when they say complete set, they mean it! We received a student text, teacher manual (that includes a small insert of the student text which makes it SO easy to follow along); student workbook (the thickest book of them all, but with enough room to write down all the answers); a tests/quiz book and teacher key for those; a pronunciation CD - that has all the vocabulary, Greek sayings, and the verb forms; flashcards; and best of all a companion DVD which has Miss Elizabeth explaining the entire lesson in short 10 to 20 minute segments.


Since the First Form Greek Complete Set is created for 7th - 12th grade I knew it would be great for Arianna who is now in 8th! (High school is just around the corner - can't believe that!) Dad and I are also using it so that when she needed to practice the words or phrases that she'd have someone to talk to in Greek. But let me tell you something - I know NO GREEK! That's why the programs from Memoria Press are so great including First Form Greek. You don't need to know Greek to help teach your student Greek.

However, it is mentioned that as a prerequisite you should know the Greek Alphabet and Memoria Press has their very own course called The Greek Alphabet book to help you really learn the foundation to this wonderful language. BUT even if you don't have the alphabet down they tell you to just spend longer in Lesson 1 learning the alphabet before you progress through the lessons.  That's what we had to do. Even with our Latin background, which we've been studying on and off for a while, Greek is not a Romance Language. And the symbols for each of the letters don't always have the sound you'd think.

We took several weeks going over both the capital and lowercase versions of the Greek alphabet spending time writing them, saying their sound, and repeating. A few weeks ago, at a homeschool convention, we even contemplated purchasing the alphabet book when it seemed that we were spending a long time on this crucial part of the language, but then we decided we'd just press on. So I had her writing out each of the letters and saying their sounds daily. Even her younger siblings wanted to learn those so they got writing sheets as well!

We then went to start the actual lessons. All of the lessons are broken down into 5 daily chunks. The Teacher Manual is very clear on what to do and when and in what order. Plus you can even keep track of where you are by checking the box once that part has been completed. When we started with Lesson 1 we listened to the DVD lesson 2-3 times over a few days, as well as listening to the pronunciation CD to make sure we were saying and pronouncing the words correctly. And of course this was part of the program that my younger students liked best - they are all learning some of the Greek along with their older sister.

This is a difficult language to learn, but Arianna is continuing to persevere and take each day as it comes. She is easily frustrated when she doesn't get something perfect right away, but as with anything you can only get better with more practice and to get a firm foundation. She is having fun learning it and her natural ability with languages has really amazed me. She also has a knack for speaking it with great tonal quality.

I hope you reach out and connect with Memoria Press through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even on Pinterest! You can also check out other reviews on some of the other products our Crew reviewed including the Iliad and the Odyssey  -  a set I'm sure we will be getting in our future with high school right around the corner!