Online Latin Vocab - Product Review

Roman Roads Media has an online program for practicing Latin vocabulary. We tried out the Picta Dicta Natural World with four of my kids, age 7, 9, 10, and 12. This program focuses on vocabulary from nature. There are different levels you can choose within the program for your child to work at their own ability level. The beginning level does not require reading and everything is read aloud to the child. Then there is a beginning reader level, a more advanced reading level, and a fast level. You can change the level at any time within the program without needing to purchase an additional subscription.

The program contains information that teaches the children the English vocabulary first and then moves on to teaching the same words they have learned about in Latin. Here is a sample of screenshots from the beginning level of the program.

After they are introduced to several new words, the next section provides practice. They see the word.

 

Then, on the next screen, they see all the pictures from the set of words they just learned and have to select the match to the word they read/heard on the previous screen. After learning the words in English, they then go on to practice in Latin. Here I am giving screenshots from a different set of vocabulary words for variety.

Then during practice they see/hear a Latin word on the screen, and on the next screen see the choices along with the English definitions.

The lessons are short and some days you may do more than one, this is a very easy program to add to your Latin studies because it is done independently by the student and can be completed in a short time of 5 -10 minutes if you choose to do just one lesson a day. Of course, you can also use it for longer and go through the 400 vocabulary words more quickly. I could also see using this with beginning readers, as part of their reading for the day.

After a lesson is completed the students are given stars next to the lesson on their dashboard, the better they do with the lesson the more stars they receive.

They can then choose to redo the lesson to earn more stars by clicking on the round arrow to the right.

In the reader level 2, there are also spelling exercises added to the practice. The student is given the English word, picture, and definition and then needs to correctly spell the Latin word on the next screen in the box provided. This section was pretty difficult for my students who are still struggling to master English spelling. It would be nice if the teacher could choose an option for whether or not to include the spelling practice.

Overall, I do think this is an excellent addition to the Latin resources available for your homeschool. There are more reviews, from the Homeschool Review Crew, covering not only Picta Dicta Natural World but also Picta Dicta Vocabulary Builder and Fitting Words Classical Rhetoric. I am very excited to check out the reviews of the rhetoric program myself.