Stories for Beginning Learners

So many textbooks contain only the dullest of stories.  This is particularly true for the beginning readers of Latin. Tired of examining the map of Italy and looking for aqua and terra,  I wrote these stories to provide some more action and practice for my Latin I students. Several of them are about things going wrong at school.  What can I say?  I write what I know.

I also write a lot about bears and chickens.  I don't have much factual knowledge about either of these animals. What I do know is that these animals are humorous for some reason, and as first and second declension nouns, they are easy to use.

Before each story,  I have written the grammar that is assumed for students to know in the story. Beginning stories are defined as stories with all cases, although most only have a few but only one verb tense.  Stories with multiple verb tenses are in the file, "Stories for the Mid-level Student." I make no promises that the grammar is perfect.  I've edited and re-edited them. However,  it's possible there may still be some small mistakes.  Please email me if you find them. I do not believe the mistakes are great enough to impede anyone's understanding of Latin grammar.

It is also my assumption that you will re-edit these stories yourself to use words more specific to your textbook.  Some of them were written while I was using Latin for Americans and others while I was using Ecce Romani. As both these texts have a different set of base vocabulary, the assumed list of known words will vary considerably.