Homeschool High School Credit For Latin

14 year old did Henle Latin last year and took a year to do a high school semester worth of work. Did fine. She's finishing up the second semester in a few weeks. What to do. Can I in good conscience quit Latin and put one year of high school Latin on transcript when a chunk was done before my formal 9th grade started? She does well and likes it, but the reason I'm considering calling it quits is that there are no more available study guides for the rest of the book...and the study guides make my life easy. I can see she checks off the boxes and hands in an assignment occasionally. (I don't have time to learn Latin myself and this is one of those years where I must be hands-off on these electives). I'm afraid that if we continue w/o said study guide she'll linger and dawdle and I really won't know any different. Help,
Sincerely,
~ Rebecca

Dear Rebecca,

Henle Latin is one high school credit per book/level/year. It doesn't matter how long or how short a time it takes.

There are two ways to measure a credit
1. counting hours
2. counting books

When you use textbooks, the easiest way to measure credits is to simply count books. That's what I recommend you do in this situation. Since she started early, you may want to call it "early high school credits" the way that I did my Latin. You can see what that looks like here: http://www.thehomescholar.com/images/stories/pdfs/sample_transcript_by_year.pdf

It's good to have at least SOME of your foreign language taken during high school age, which you are doing this year. General college preparation suggests that 2 years of foreign language is good. Frankly, though, since she likes it, I would strive for the third year. It's an added plus in college admission!

Don't be afraid of Latin. She already knows enough Latin to virtually teach herself the rest. I know that to be true, because that's what we did. I sort of "taught" the first year, I hung on for dear life during second year Latin, and by third year Latin it was.... Well, it was exactly like calculus. I only corrected tests, and it had to look exactly like the answer sheet or I counted it wrong :-)

I would encourage you to not learn Latin yourself. Have her take the third year of Latin. Your job will be two things:

1. make sure she studies Latin every day for at least 30-60 minutes and
2. correct tests (not daily work)

You don't have to know it at all. You don't have to schedule it, because it doesn't matter how fast it goes for her, just how much she does each day. When she's done with the third level, put it on the transcript.

If you think she would do far better with a schedule, that's not so difficult either. I don't have the textbook in front of me, but you can just take the book and divide it by 32 to determine how much she should do each week. Frankly, that's why most textbooks have 32 chapters Some will have 16 chapters, and you do a chapter every TWO weeks. That will give you a general sense of "Are we on schedule? Chapter 6 on the 6th week of the school year - yes."

If she HATED Latin and was older, then my advice might be different. But since she likes it and she is just beginning high school, going for the third year should be relatively painless - as long as you remember that YOU don't need to learn Latin :-)

By the way, what if she "fails?" You can always drop the class, and leave it off the transcript as if it never happened. We did that with Latin 4, LOL! You can also try to track down a Latin tutor, just for a supplement later on. You could supplement with LiveMocha.com, or contact Henle for other options.