One of the things I’ve been looking forward to in our journey of homeschooling is the day when I’d be able to add biblical languages into our curriculum. Next week I’ll begin realizing that dream as my oldest son and I embark on the journey of me teaching him New Testament Greek. I’m truly excited to help open his mind up to the expanded world of New Testament study that becomes available with a solid foundation in Greek. I’ve looked around for an existing curriculum that would be appropriate for 12-15 year old students, but haven’t found anything that struck my fancy. That being the case, we’re going to start off with a bit of an eclectic approach pulling from the various resources that I currently have in my personal library and using other resources that are freely available on the web. These are the grammars I currently have on hand:
- New Testament Greek For Beginners by J. Gresham Machen
- A Primer of Biblical Greek by N. Clayton Croy
I will gladly take suggestions on other grammars that might be especially helpful for younger learners.
I’ve seen some interesting vocabulary flashcard offerings that are available from Zondervan, Kregel and others, but haven’t had a chance to try any of those out just yet. If any of my publicist friends want to hook me up with a free review copy of their flashcards or flashcard apps, I’d be happy to write a review. 
For starters, I think I’ll have my son make his initial flashcards by hand in order to get additional practice writing Greek. Eventually, I’ll move him to something electronic for ease of storage and use, but that’ll be at last 3-6 months into the learning process. Again, if any of you has experience with flashcards or flashcards apps that would be well-suited for younger learners, please share your thoughts in a comment on this blog post.
As for his first Greek New Testament, I’m going to present him with a copy of The UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader’s Edition (2007 Edition). I know that there is an updated 2010 edition containing textual notes, but I already have the 2007 edition on hand, so we’ll go with that one for now. Eventually I will introduce him to advanced software tools such as BibleWorks and Accordance, but I want him to get a thorough grasp of the fundamentals before turning him on to software-based tools. I’ve seen far too many people get lazy when they’re turned on to software tools too quickly.
It’s hard to say what this will look like when it’s all said and done as we’re only at the beginning of the journey. I’ll be chronicling our progress here on Bible Geek Gone Wild as we move along during the 2012-2013 school year. My hope is that I’ll be able to take this experience and use it to produce a New Testament Greek curriculum that would work well for a homeschool audience. My major goal is that I want it to be accessible and useful to parents, even those who have no previous experience with the language. If you’re a publisher or curriculum provider who’s intrigued by this idea and would like to partner with me in this project, feel free to contact me.
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Years ago Mary Pride reviewed “Basic Greek in 30 Minutes a Day” by Jim Found.
Also “Hey, Andrew!!Teach me some Greek” is very useable.
Diane
Diane,
Thank you for your suggestions. I’ll take a look at these titles.
I don’t know how much your willing to spend or if you have heard of this but there is Living Koine Greek at http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/ which is Learning Koine Greek in a different way the price is 150 but its so worth it
Thanks for the info Theodore. I’ll take a look at it.
Kids Greek: http://www.kidsgreek.com/
Thanks Jenny.
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