Our second review this week has been all about Latin! We have been using the Picta Dicta Vocabulary Builder by Roman Roads Media for the last few weeks to see if we could learn some new words in Latin.
I have never taken any kind of Latin so when this review came up, I thought why not check out the Vocabulary Builder to get a small taste of it. It's definitely not a complete curriculum by any means, but I think it would be a huge asset to someone who is taking Latin. On top of that it's fun!
Picta Dicta is completely online, self paced and geared for a range of ages starting in junior high on up through college. It covers general reading vocabulary learning such things as verbs, nouns, adjectives, and other concepts to help students with reading proficiency. It uses a combination of things such as pictures, sounds, and concepts just to name a few, to help the student remember each word or phrase.
Roman Roads was very generous in giving us as many licenses as we needed to complete this review. This means I could also use it in addition to Gavin, my 13 year old. I normally have them working on reviews themselves for the majority of the time, but I really dove into this one myself. We ended up pretty much doing it together since it was just me and him.
Getting started with the program is super easy. Once you set up your learner profiles, you are ready to get started. We just dove right in. The Vocabulary Builder has several different difficulty levels, but we decided that we should definitely start off with Easy.
Once you are to your dashboard, you can see the word "Play" at the top and you will click on that. This will take you to where the lessons are.
On the right side of the screen are two icons, Train and Go. To get started, we went to Go. This brings you to the first lesson which is over The Map and all things to do with The Map. Each lesson is broken down into 3 parts. Learn, Choose, and Spell.
You will start with the Learn category. This is where the words are introduced to you. There are flashcards that pop up that tell you the origin of the word, it has a picture to help you remember the word, and also tells you what the word means.
After showing you a few flash cards, it will next give you words that you have to match with the pictures. This is extremely helpful for the visual learner. Aka me and my children! Sometimes I really think the pictures are what helped us remember the words.
When you have completed the Learn category, you will then move to the Choose category. Here you will be given the word like before and then you will have to choose the correct word or meaning.
We did really well with the words, but we were constantly getting hung up on the phrases! We finally made it through though because the program will continue to go over them until you know them.
Next you will move on to what we found to be the hardest part of each lesson which is Spell. Here they gave you a word and then you had to not only remember it, but also spell it correctly! This was very challenging for us for some reason!
After every chapter or two, there will be a review over what you've learned. You can also go the the Train icon at the top of your dashboard and pull up reviews that way. There are a number of ways to review, so you can have all of the practice you want!
Like I said, this would be great for someone who is taking a Latin course, so we may revisit this again when Gav is in high school! We really enjoyed using it, and we even came away knowing some new Latin words. I would highly recommend it for a supplement or to anyone just wanting to brush up on their Latin!
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