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I am waiting for my guide so I haven't officially started HOD and haven't read the Narration Tips in it.

I am very new to narrating. We have only used it a few times and it was disasterous! My kids are 10 and 8. They are very competitive and want to retell everything, and I mean everything, as fast as possible before the other one has a chance to say anything.

My question is: how do you handle narration with two kids? Do I have the younger one start first and then the older one add more detail? In my family my younger one is the detail oriented one and my older one is the one who misses quite a bit.

I have a friend who has her kids narrate one at a time to her in another room. I really didn't want to do that if I could help it.

What are your suggestions?

I have two dc that narrate together as well. If it's a longer section, I break it up into two parts and have one narrate the beginning and one narrate the end. If not, I take turns on days. For instance, usually day1 in the Bigger manual doesn't ask for a history narration, but day2 does. So, I'll have one narrate the day1 reading and the next day the other narrates the day2 reading. I would try to avoid having them both narrate the same passage back-to-back so that they don't start competing against each other. There's so many "right" ways to narrate that you wouldn't want one child to feel that his was no-good compared to his sibling's. We have a rule that when one dc is narrating, all must listen respectfully and not interupt. We haven't had any problems yet! I also do DITHOR with my 2 dc seperately and use this time to really address any "major" narration problems at that time. This way the dc aren't corrected publically but more privately to avoid insecurities arising.

In another post previously Carrie suggested the used of 2 diff colored beans in her pocket. She pulls one out and that's who's turn it is. We tried it successfully in our home. I have one competitive one and one "do it all for me one"

Tansy,

Thank you for the bean idea that Carrie suggested. I think that is something I will definately do!