Free Latin classes and resources for all ages

Is your child interested in learning Latin? There are many free resources online to help make it easier.

From Latin for Mountain Men to printable games to college level courses, here’s a round-up of some of the best free Latin resources online.

Linney’s Latin Class is a free audio class for homeschooled and self-taught students, by the author of Getting Started With Latin. It uses a public domain textbook that can be downloaded in PDF form from Google Books, The First Year of Latin by Gunnison and Harley (1902 edition). The teacher explains:

This online Latin class consists of a series of free recorded lectures in MP3 format. These lectures take the listener through a Latin textbook called The First Year of Latin by Gunnison and Harley (1902 edition). So to participate in Linney’s Latin Class, you will need to get the textbook, download the lectures, and listen to the lectures. You will probably want to get a notebook of some kind to do your work in.

Latin course for the Virtual School of Languages is a basic course offered online in a series of text lessons. There are nearly 50 lessons at the beginner level and then eight intermediate lessons, along with links to other Latin resources for reference and for fun.

Latin Online is another free Latin course online, this one offered by the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. This is a higher level class best suited for high school students and more advanced students. The contents include ten in-depth lessons and fifty grammar points.

Free Latin textbooks online: I compiled links to quite a few free Latin books for this column here: Free Latin books and more online (link coming soon, leave a comment if I forget it!)

Ellen McHenry’s Basement Workshop offers some marvelous free downloadable games to help kids learn Latin. These include: “Chariots at the Circus,” which teaches 85 Latin words. It features a board that resemble the Circus Maximus where chariot races were held. “The Verb Conjugation Game” practices two conjugation forms. Players try to get cards that match English/Latin, such as “I love/amo” and place them on their conjugation mat next to the appropriate endings. “Simple Silly Sentence Game” makes two-words sentences and features some silly animal pictures, so you can make sentences like “The dog reads” or “The fish orders.” It has 16 animal cards and two spinners: one for the subjects and one for the verbs. These are just a few of the free games and printables on this great website.

Latin For Mountain Men has a fun title but actually does provide free Latin lessons online and does it in a way that may appeal to some older kids. The author says:

Ave amice. Here are two dozen short lessons on learning Latin designed for “mountain men” (and women: montani montanaeque), engineers, philosophers, and anyone else looking for entertainment and with lots of free time by the campfire…

My explicit aim in this course is to enable you to decipher short Latin phrases, such as the Latin names, abbreviations, and nomenclature in biology, astronomy, medicine, law, and scholarly work. I can’t help but mention that school and scholar are from Greek schole, spare time, and that student is from studium, zeal. These lessons are meant to be done in your spare time, and enjoyed. I don’t expect you to memorize, but only to recognize, and look up if you don’t.

Study Guide to Wheelock’s Latin is a rather dry but often used free text online.
Wikibooks Latin is an open source Latin course created by multiple authors.
Latinum – Latin Language Materials on YouTube offers an enormous range of materials in video format for all learning levels.
Talkin’ Like The Ancient Romans offers some very basic Latin instruction, mostly just for fun. Kids can learn the basics of pronunciation and a few fun phrases such as “Do you know Latin?” and (perhaps more relevant to homeschooling moms) “Do you have more wine?”.
Latin flashcards: Many flashcard sites have Latin flashcards that have been created by other users. See Quizlet, Cram, Flashcard Machine or your favorite flashcard site for many examples.