Some years later, teaching Henle Latin at a homeschool co-op, I discovered immediately that the students were being hampered by a deficient knowledge of sentence structure and grammar. Seeing that Fr. Henle used a few examples of sentence diagrams in his lessons, I decided to introduce sentence diagramming to my Latin students and was astonished to see how quickly connections and comprehension developed with this graphic illustration of grammatical concepts. Diagramming Latin sentences on the chalkboard became the highlight of our classroom time, and diagramming worksheets went into my growing file of self-created Latin learning aids.
When one of the mothers suggested I compose my own elementary Latin program, the idea for my series became reality. Because I had used Bob Books and Little Angel Readers with my own beginning readers, the combination of small readers and workbooks seemed to be the ideal paradigm. The Bastien Piano Method was another inspiration because several books are presented at each level, breaking the material into the ideal “small bites”. Accordingly, the first level of my program, Puella Romana, introduces the first declension with a the second, Britanni et Galli, presents the second declension and the third, Civitates Europae, introduces the third declension with a reader/workbook/drill book combination, with pronunciation CD’s.
Following the model of the first ten chapters in Henle Latin I, Little Latin Readers limits the use of verbs in the first three levels to third person intransitive verbs while nominative, genitive and ablative endings of nouns are introduced. In this way, the range of endings is kept very small and more attention may be fixed upon the conceptualization of Subject-Verb agreement, along with the use of being verbs and predicate complements. For variety’s sake, a number of prepositional phrases and the genitive of possession are also included in the primers.
On the fourth through seventh levels, starting with Italia and ending with Sancta Missa, the fourth and fifth declensions are added along with more advanced grammatical concepts. The diagramming of sentences begins in the fifth level, Vita Mariae, and continues throughout.
The workbooks at each level provide mastery of a select set of grammatical concepts, using a variety of comprehension exercises with constant review. Recently added drill books on all levels offer more detailed grammar explanations and vocabulary enrichment. The drill books also offer practice with conventional paradigms of verbs with three persons, singular and plural and imperfect and perfect tenses in all four conjugations. Pronouns and practice with Latin cardinal numbers are also presented. For each corresponding workbook lesson, a quote from Scripture or the writings of the saints is presented for memorization in the drill book. The drill book includes diacritical markings and study of the pronunciation and accent rules so the so the student will become more adept at pronunciation.