Younger sister narrating better

I was wondering if I could get some wise feedback from all of you. I have a ds7 and dd5. My ds is an excellent reader and excels in math and science. When it comes to both the physical task of writing and the mental effort of composition he has been slower. He writes well now, and can narrate decently but he usually needs time to think, and stops a lot and you can literally see the effort he is putting into it. He constructs excellent sentences once it finally comes out, corrects his own grammar, watches my spelling like a hawk if I am taking dictation for him, etc, so he does well.

Enter dd, the 5yo upstart. The only narrating she does so far is my children’s favorite activity of the day – our Bible journals. Each day we read our portion of scripture and then the children take turns narrating it to me and I write it down for them and then they draw a picture. The problem is my dd is very gifted with language. She taught herself to read before she was 4. She can narrate fluently and with perfect accuracy. She read Pippi Longstocking last year at 4 and then recounted the entire thing for me the entire 35 minutes I did dishes. She also has caught onto cursive easily and writes nicely. She’s kind of scary 🙂 She reminds me so much of me and my lifelong obsession with words. She’s also very intimidating to her older brother.

The biggest problem is during our Bible time my son has started voicing his annoyance that she rattles off a perfect narration lickety split and fills up the whole page while he sometimes takes ten minutes to voice enough to fill half the page. She also remembers everyone’s names, where things happened, and such. It has become a daily thing. He just gets so discouraged about it. I thought about stopping the journals but they absolutely love them and love to look back through them and show them off. Plus, it is excellent practice for them in composition as they actually see their words written down. I can see how much my son has improved since we started doing this dictated narration. Oral narrations don’t make him think as much about how something sounds.

My concern is that next year when dd joins our more formal schooling (right now she only does copywork, basic math, and reads aloud to me) and will be narrating history and such with her brother that this will really become an issue. She already listens in and will supply proper names if my son hesitates, or she will prompt him. He gets pretty mad :-/ We had to make a “Respect the person who is narrating” rule which helped. I have tried pointing out that my ds is very good at math, and draws very well, etc.

I originally was with AO and realize that the whole separate year thing would solve this. BUT I love SCM’s family basis and would rather work this out.

Any ideas, examples?

Thanks,

Tara