Latin, Latin, and more Latin!

I've had quite a few questions lately about our Latin studies, so I thought I'd take a moment to review the many books we've used. First though, why study Latin? I decided to teach my children Latin after reading this article from Memoria Press and this article in the same issue of The Classical Teacher, which I thoroughly enjoy reading. To put it in a nutshell for our family, Latin is teaching us to use the English language and it will help the kids learn other languages in the future. We started out with Prima Latina, which we loved. It sounds insane, but my kids really enjoyed memorizing the prayers. The vocabulary was gentle and words they enjoyed using. We only got into trouble when we started conjugating verbs and declining nouns, but we pressed through. I thought we'd use the dvds extensively, but after watching once, my kids begged me not to put it in again. We did use the cd though, every time we got in the car. From there we went on to Latina Christiana. Although its from Memoria Press, we didn't like it nearly as well as PL. We got about 8 lessons in before it was too much for Mr. Blue and we stopped. Once again, we hated the dvd and loved the cd. It didn't have the prayer memorization, which we missed. Along with LC, we also used Lingua Angelica, also from Memoria Press. This is just a beautiful cd and even though we haven't gotten around to translating yet, we enjoy listening to it frequently. Then we tried Latin for Children. These dvds were much friendlier than the Latina Christiana set, but my kids still didn't click with them. What I love about Latin for Children are the extras! They've got the History Reader, the Activity Book, the dvd, etc. to go along with the basic text. I'm hoping to use these down the road, but we gave up again after a few lessons. In the meantime I started Song School Latin with Miss Pink. Wow! I love this program! It's so simple and fun. Miss Pink thinks its okay, but Miss Purple? She love, love, loves it! She knows all the songs and sings them for fun frequently. She asks to hear the cd whenever we get in the car. Mr. Blue today asked if he could do Song School Latin for his Latin now, so I guess its a winner with him too. This month we've started Lively Latin after reading lots of positive reviews for it. Miss Green says she really, really likes this one. She's been exclaiming every day during Latin, "Mommy, I really like this Latin!" Mr. Blue has started LL as well, though he's a few weeks behind Miss Green. I think this is going to be a great fit, although I've read recently that LL 2 is not as good as LL 1, so we'll have to see when we get around to that point. I've seen so many different Latin curricula tempting me, but I'm trying to be strong and save my school budget for math. There's just too much fun stuff out there calling my name. I've got to stop researching. Every month there's something new out there that promises to be all I've been looking for for a certain child/subject. It's a siren call that I try to avoid when possible, but its a necessary evil. I'm scheduled to go to a homeschool fair this weekend, and I'm debating the wisdom of that. Will it help or hinder or efforts for this year? Well, either way, I'm getting my list together!