Greek N Stuff Review

“Why is your 5-year-old learning Greek?” 

I heard this several times during out time with this review.  I was delighted to explain all of the great reasons behind this program, and I was usually met with interested people. 

Greek N Stuff offers many different products, but we reviewed “Hey Andrew, Teach Me Some Greek!” worktext level one.  This program is intended for the earliest Greek learners, up to the middle elementary grades, when they recommend starting with level 2.  It teaches the Greek alphabet and a few words. 

I used this program with Bop, since it is consumable.  The worktest is made up of handwriting exercises and fun activities, with a set of flashcards in the back.  The activities are all designed to teach the Biblical Greek alphabet, and they are well-thought out.  The child has to work on learning the sounds of the letters, their order, the names of the letters, and recognizing the letters in actual Greek words.  The child is introduced to each letter by writing it several times and learning the names.  The next page contains more writing practice, and teaches the sound of the letter as well.  After that there are several practice pages, where the activates are, and these are for both the letter being leraned and the previous letters.  This is great since you will be working toward mastery.  The flashcards in the back are supposed to eb used everyday, so we copied them onto cardstock so they would be tougher.

We also received a CD with pronunciation of the letters and new words, a reading of the Reader, and the Greek alphabet song.  I found this marginally helpful, since I had no trouble understanding the pronunciation of each letter from the worktext.  If you were getting level two and the Reader it would be more helpful, I am sure.  I appreciate receiving, however, because it is always so much easier to review programs when you can see it all!  Pronunciation of the words is more difficult then the single letters, so it is a very nice tool to have for that.  There is a separate CD for the higher levels.

Bop loved “Hey Andrew, Teach Me Some Greek!”.  She really did, and even though we were doing language two days a week, she asked for it every day.  Seh would get a little discouraged at teh lines and lines of handwriting, but I didn’t have her do them all in one day, so that worked out fine.  She would do a couple of lines a day  and the others would be used for review later on.  She had no trouble catching on to the sounds of the letters, and I was just amazed at how easily she picked it up.  I had to check the backs of the flashcards when we drilled, and she always remembered them better then me. 

I loved it, too.  I loved how the few words taught in the back of the book were a Bible verse.  How neat!  Biblical Greek is something that could be so useful later, so I think havign a fun way to intorduce it is really nice.  I was a fraid that we would have trouble with confusion, since a few of the letters look very simular to English letters, but often have different sounds.  I found that by alerting her to the shape of the letter, comparing it to the English letter with the same sounds, and then showing her where she could get confused, we had no trouble.  And of course, most of the letters are not confusing. I also appreciated the addition of the flashcards, which were very helpfyul to Bop.

I would recommend this program to anyone who desires to teach their children Biblical Greek.  It is fun, simple yet very effective.  I do wish that a little more emphasis was placed on the letter sounds, but since the names sound so much like the sounds, that is not a big problem.  I love that this program is centered around Biblical Greek, and I love that the words learned are straight from the Bible.  A goal of reading the Greek Bible might seem too lofty for your children, but with this program it looks much easier and fun, too.  I would think that this might not be the best program for a Dyslexic child, or one that is having trouble with learning the English letters.  In that case it may be best to focus on reading skills, and then after the child is reading well they can start learning the Greek letters.

You can read more about “Hey Andrew, Teach Me Some Greek!” at the Greek N Stuff website.  They also offer a Reader for the first level which is very tempting.  Check out all of the other TOS reviews for Greek N Stuff (not just this book!) at The Old Schoolhouse Crew blog.

I received this product free of charge

as a member of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew,

for review purposes. I promise to be honest

and fair in my reviews, and I received no

other compensation in exchange for my review.

You can visit The Old Schoolhouse Crew blog

to read more reviews on this product.