Latina Christiana

Latina Christiana is the second rung on Memoria Press's Latin staircase, a 25-lesson grammar-first introduction that has become the default on-ramp into ecclesiastical Latin for a generation of classical homeschool families. It is modest in scope, unapologetic in method, and almost stubbornly small, and that smallness is the point.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Classical / grammar-translation / subject specialist
Worldview	Christian-ecumenical (ecclesiastical pronunciation, minimal doctrinal content)
Grades	3-6 typical; usable through 8
Formats	Print student book, teacher manual, streaming video, streaming pronunciation audio, digital flashcards
Cost tier	Budget
Parent intensity	3 (1 with video; 4 without, if the parent has no Latin background)
ESA-common	No (specialist product; some states reimburse Latin materials)
Accredited	No (curriculum only; not a school)
Established	Latina Christiana program c. 1996; Memoria Press founded 1994
Website	memoriapress.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	4	Genuine grammar-translation Latin at an honest elementary level; not a language-exposure toy
Ease of teaching	4	Short lessons, clear teacher manual, optional video does the heavy lifting
Content quality	5	Cheryl Lowe's writing is crisp, teacherly, and free of filler
Flexibility	4	Stands alone cleanly; drops into any curriculum that allots 30 minutes for Latin
Value for money	5	A complete basic set runs under $100; the video adds cost but not necessity
Worldview scope	4	Minimal doctrinal content; used by Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and classical-secular families
Visual/design	3	Spartan, two-color workbook; charm and restraint instead of glossy production
Support resources	4	Teacher manual, video, audio, flashcards, and a vigorous online community

Who the publisher is

Memoria Press is a Louisville-based classical publisher founded in 1994 by Cheryl Lowe and her son Brian. Lowe was a chemistry teacher by training who, dissatisfied with the Latin materials available for her own homeschool, began writing what would become the Forms series and Latina Christiana. She also co-founded Highlands Latin School in Louisville, which functions as Memoria Press's working classroom and pedagogical laboratory. Lowe died in 2017; the company is now led by her son Martin Cothran's editorial bench and a second generation of Lowe family members.

The scale of Latina Christiana is hard to pin down precisely. Memoria Press is a private company and does not publish sales figures, but it is widely regarded by the classical homeschool press and by Cathy Duffy's review of the Latin series as the most-used elementary Latin program in the United States classical homeschool market. It is stocked by every major homeschool retailer, recommended by Classical Conversations tutors as a compatible supplement, and used inside hundreds of classical Christian day schools as the standard third- or fourth-grade Latin text.

Theologically, Memoria Press describes itself as classical Christian without denominational tilt. Latina Christiana uses ecclesiastical pronunciation, the Latin of the Roman Catholic liturgy, which Catholics prefer and which most Protestant classical schools have adopted as the simpler and more phonetically regular of the two conventions. Scripture and prayer texts appear occasionally (the Gloria Patri, the Sanctus, the Paternoster); the doctrinal content is otherwise thin enough that Catholic, confessional Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and classical-secular families have all adopted it without friction.

The core pedagogy

Latina Christiana is grammar-translation Latin in the older European sense, the method Erasmus would recognize. Each week the student learns a small grammar form (a declension ending, a verb conjugation), memorizes ten vocabulary words, traces the English derivatives those words produce, memorizes a Latin saying (often liturgical, sometimes proverbial), and then translates short sentences in both directions. The pedagogy assumes that Latin is learned the way a trained musician learns scales: by daily, un-charming, deliberate repetition, until the forms are automatic.

The scope is deliberately narrow. Across 25 lessons the student covers first and second declension nouns and adjectives, first and second conjugation verbs in three tenses, the irregular verb sum, and first- and second-person pronouns. That is less grammar than a semester of formal Latin at a college would cover, and it is delivered at a pace a third-grader can hold. The program is explicitly a bridge, designed to precede the publisher's First Form Latin, which is where real grammar-translation Latin begins for the middle grades.

Three mechanics carry the weight: (1) The teacher manual is genuinely a manual. Cheryl Lowe wrote it for parents who have never seen a Latin verb ending. Every answer is provided; every translation is explained; every grammatical term is defined before it is used. (2) Streaming video replaces the parent as primary presenter. A family that does not want to be the Latin teacher can subscribe to the video and have Leigh Lowe (Cheryl's daughter-in-law, and a longtime Highlands Latin instructor) present each lesson. The parent becomes grader and drill partner rather than teacher. (3) Flashcard drill is not optional. The program assumes the student runs through vocabulary and form cards daily, five minutes, consistently, across the year, and the ones who skip it stall out by lesson twelve.

A day in the life

A fourth-grader using the full Latina Christiana program typically gets thirty to forty minutes a day, four days a week, with a fifth day reserved for the weekly quiz. On a Monday the parent starts the child on flashcard drill (five minutes, vocabulary and form cards from the prior two weeks), then plays the new week's video lesson (roughly 20 minutes. Leigh Lowe presenting from a whiteboard), and closes with the student completing the first page of the workbook lesson. Tuesday: more flashcards, a second workbook page, recitation of the week's Latin saying and grammar form. Wednesday: vocabulary mastery check, translation exercises. Thursday: derivatives work, review of the grammar form. Friday: the parent administers the week's short quiz from the teacher manual. Total weekly time for the child: roughly two and a half hours. Total weekly prep for the parent using video: about fifteen minutes.

A parent teaching without the video runs closer to forty minutes a day and closer to thirty minutes of prep per week, since they are presenting the lesson themselves from the teacher's manual. The teacher's manual is explicit enough that a parent with no Latin at all can do this; what is required is that they be willing to say the forms out loud with the child, because the ecclesiastical pronunciation has to be heard and drilled to stick.

What they do exceptionally well

Modesty of scope. Latina Christiana does one thing, introduce a child to ecclesiastical Latin through twenty-five weeks of grammar-translation drill, and it does not apologize for the narrowness. No thematic unit studies, no cultural enrichment inserts, no art projects about Roman togas. The lesson is the lesson. Families who have been burned by bloated elementary-language programs appreciate the austerity almost immediately.

Teacher manual for the untrained parent. Cheryl Lowe wrote the teacher guide from the assumption that the adult using it has taken no Latin, does not remember English grammar past the parts of speech, and has forty minutes a day to give. The manual is indexed, glossed, and demonstrative; it does not hide behind a teacher's answer key. Few homeschool-subject-specialist programs at this grade level meet their teachers where they actually are, and this is one of the reasons Latina Christiana retains families across three and four years.

Pricing. At roughly $19 for the student book and $30 for the teacher manual as of April 2026, a family can start a child in Latin for under $60. The video subscription and pronunciation audio add cost, but the paper-and-pencil core is one of the cheapest serious specialist products in classical homeschooling. Most families who use Latina Christiana are astonished, after budgeting for a major curriculum, how little the Latin slot costs.

Ecumenical reach. Because the doctrinal content is thin and the pronunciation is the one used by the Catholic Church (and taught in most Protestant classical schools), Latina Christiana has quietly become the cross-denominational Latin standard. Catholic families, Lutheran families, Orthodox families, evangelical classical families, and Catholic-curious secular classical families all use it without conflict. The ecumenical footprint is not an accident. Memoria Press designed it that way, but it is genuinely rare in a market where most publishers choose a confession and ship.

What they do poorly

Production values. The workbook is two-color, the font is plain, the layout is exactly what a thrifty classical school printer would produce. Families coming from a glossy curriculum (think Rooted in Language or The Good and the Beautiful) find the materials visually underwhelming. For a child who is motivated by design polish, this matters; for a child who was going to hate Latin anyway, the plain page is not the cause of the hate.

Thin cultural scaffolding. The program teaches Latin forms but does not teach much about the Latin-speaking world. There is no sustained treatment of Roman history, mythology, or classical civilization embedded in the sequence; families who want that cultural dimension layered in need to source it separately (the publisher's own D'Aulaires series and Classical Studies Flashcards are the intended complements). A family expecting a full elementary-humanities package will find Latin sitting in a narrow lane.

The video presenter is an acquired taste. Cathy Duffy noted the regional accent of the video instructor, which is a Kentucky accent laid over ecclesiastical Latin, and while this is not a real pedagogical problem (the pronunciation is correct), a handful of families report that the child imprints on the cadence. For most children this is a non-issue; for a few it produces a Latin class that sounds a little like Louisville and a little like Rome.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Latina Christiana if: you are committed to the Memoria Press sequence and want the proper on-ramp into First Form Latin; your child is a third- through fifth-grader who can hold a thirty-minute lesson and a daily flashcard drill; you want a grammar-first, translation-first Latin rather than a conversational exposure program; you want ecclesiastical pronunciation; you are budget-conscious and want a real academic product for under $100.

• Skip Latina Christiana if: you want classical pronunciation (use Wheelock-adjacent materials or Cambridge Latin Course instead); you want a conversational, immersion-style Latin (Minimus or Familia Romana reading series serve better); your child is under seven or over twelve (Prima Latina and First Form respectively fit better); you want rich cultural and historical material woven into the language program; you object on principle to grammar-translation pedagogy.

Cost honest assessment

A complete Latina Christiana basic set, student book, teacher manual, pronunciation audio, runs approximately $70-$90 new from Memoria Press or a reseller as of April 2026. Adding the streaming video subscription takes the total to roughly $150-$200 for a year. Adding the digital flashcards and a set of classical studies supplements pushes the high end to about $250. That is the whole Latin spend for the year.

Compared to Classical Academic Press's Latin for Children (roughly $90-$120 for a similar elementary grade with video) and to Cambridge Latin Course Unit 1 (roughly $60-$80 for the book but with significantly more ancillary cost), Latina Christiana sits at the budget end of serious specialist Latin. What you are buying is a tight, dense, small program written by a single experienced teacher, not a thick multimedia suite.

A realistic family budget for Latin across the full Memoria Press sequence (Prima Latina through Fourth Form, roughly grades 2-10) runs about $600-$900 for print materials over eight years, or $1,800-$2,400 if video is added throughout. That is remarkably cheap for eight years of specialist language instruction.

ESA eligibility notes

Latina Christiana is a specialist subject product rather than a complete curriculum, which makes its ESA status state-dependent. Several state ESA marketplaces, including Arizona's ClassWallet vendor pool and Florida's Step Up For Students, carry Memoria Press materials broadly, and Latina Christiana generally qualifies under foreign-language or enrichment line items. States with narrower ESA rubrics (Iowa, Arkansas) typically require the family to document Latin as a transcript-bearing subject, which is straightforward for students in grades five and up but occasionally flagged for younger students. Memoria Press itself does not publish an ESA-specific ordering workflow on its main site as of April 2026; families generally order through the state marketplace's standard vendor channel.

Alternatives

• Prima Latina. Memoria Press's own first-grade on-ramp; a family with a second- or third-grader who is not yet reading fluently in English will usually start here instead.
• Song School Latin, a family who wants a gentler, song-driven introduction to Latin for the K-3 range would choose Song School Latin over the more austere Latina Christiana.
• Lively Latin, a family who wants richer cultural and historical material woven through the elementary Latin sequence would prefer Lively Latin, which trades the terse drill for a more expansive magazine-style workbook.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed Memoria Press's published Latina Christiana product listings, the fourth-edition sample pages available on the publisher and resale pages (Rainbow Resource), and the Memoria Press About Our Founder page documenting Cheryl Lowe's biography and company history. We cross-referenced against Cathy Duffy's review of the Memoria Press Latin sequence for pedagogical detail and pronunciation notes. Prices and program details verified April 2026.