Name: CHEC Rocky Mountain Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-06-12T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-06-14T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Denver, CO

This topic has 6 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 8 months ago by amandajhilburn.

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

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October 8, 2010 at 5:46 pm
amandajhilburn
Participant
I am having a hard time getting my children to give me very much information when narrating. Would it be okay to show them some examples of narrations by other children to give them an idea of what I am asking for? Maybe some of the answers to the exam questions in the new SCM Language Arts handbook?
Thanks,
Amanda
October 9, 2010 at 2:27 am
amandajhilburn
Participant
ummm…after re-reading the samples from School Education I think that showing those narrations to my children might overwhelm them right now. I may be wrong. I don’t know. Maybe I should read something and narrate it myself to give them an example of what I am asking for.
October 9, 2010 at 2:53 am
suzukimom
Participant
Yes, read something to them, then narrate it. First you may find that it isn’t as easy as you are thinking, and second it can give them an idea what you want.
October 9, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Esby
Member
I wholeheartedly encourage you to model the narration yourself rather than showing them examples. As Suzukimom says, narration is not easy. It takes time to develop the skills, but the skills will indeed develop with practice. A slow start is okay – they don’t need to be masters immediately.
Have fun with it…narrating is a challenge!
October 9, 2010 at 9:19 pm
amandajhilburn
Participant
Thank you 🙂 I will demonstrate on Monday and see how it goes LOL
October 9, 2010 at 10:01 pm
lgeurink
Member
I think your children are pretty young right? Mine are 8 and 5, are we in about the same place? My 8 year old has gotten much better this fall since we left off in the spring but there are still times when I was like, “nope, I don’t remember saying anything like that!” I started using Sonya’s idea for writing down some key words on the board before reading Famous Men of Ancient Greece and that helped, they enjoyed the game of listening for them. I have also decided to use more of Catherine Vos’ Story Bible for Josh-Malachi as they were really having a hard time getting much info out of the long passages regarding the Judges. There is also too much for their age in A Child’s Geography (but I am loving it!) so I am just skipping the more detailed parts. Those are just a few ideas we have had to incorporate for narations this year. Are the passages too difficult to understand? Are the words used to foreign and difficult? Do they need some prompts to help focus?
Just out of curiosity, are you using the SCM modules, and if so which one are you on? I feel like you are and maybe we are on the same one? Mod 2? I have found it a bit harder for them than Mod 1.
October 9, 2010 at 10:17 pm
amandajhilburn
Participant
We are actually not using SCM for history/geography this year My children are ages 8 and 10 now. We have had a few issues with the Ancients and myths in the past and it sort of threw ourchronological order all out of whack. LOL
I chose to use My Father’s World Exploring Countries and Cultures for this year to kind ofhave time to get myself together using the CM method. I am still learning and wanted a year that was already planned for me so that I could continue learning without having to completely change what we were doing every other week. I felt like that was what I did last year. We ended up doing SCM module 5 last year by just reading through all the books listed for 1-3 grades. Now that I look back, I can see that they actually learned more by just reading all those books than they have any other year!
Anyway, back to narration. I think you are right about a few things. 1. I need to write down key words. 2. I need to chill out a bit and let them learn how to narrate. 3. I need to make sure that the books that I am asking them to narrate are good books for narration. (Since MFW does not require narration, their book choices may not be the best for narration)