Another Narration Q...and Summarizing

[Carrie]

Patty,

Narrating is a process that changes the narrator over time, so don't feel bad in any way about your narrations. There is not a wrong way, rather more of a progression in narration. I am a summary type person too, and it has stretched me immensely to have to model narrations for my children. I think I have grown as a narrator through the years too, and it has been a journey!

If you do have CM's original volumes, you may wish to read the following sections as time allows. There are many more references related to narration, but these are great ones to begin pondering. I must share that I do deviate from CM's philsophy in the area of grammar instruction, and we do also schedule more formal writing outside of written narrations too than she advocated, so I am not a CM purist. But, she has so much that is good to say that I deeply love her philosophy and enjoy the wisdom she shares.:

Home Education Volume 1: p. 231-233 (on oral narrations)
School Education Volume 3: p. 178-181
A Philosophy of Education Volume 6: p. 16-18; p. 171- top of p. 174, p. 185 (top), p.260-261

Blessings,
Carrie

[pjdobro]

Patty,

Narrating is a process that changes the narrator over time, so don't feel bad in any way about your narrations. There is not a wrong way, rather more of a progression in narration. I am a summary type person too, and it has stretched me immensely to have to model narrations for my children. I think I have grown as a narrator through the years too, and it has been a journey!

If you do have CM's original volumes, you may wish to read the following sections as time allows. There are many more references related to narration, but these are great ones to begin pondering. I must share that I do deviate from CM's philsophy in the area of grammar instruction, and we do also schedule more formal writing outside of written narrations too than she advocated, so I am not a CM purist. But, she has so much that is good to say that I deeply love her philosophy and enjoy the wisdom she shares.:

Home Education Volume 1: p. 231-233 (on oral narrations)
School Education Volume 3: p. 178-181
A Philosophy of Education Volume 6: p. 16-18; p. 171- top of p. 174, p. 185 (top), p.260-261

Blessings,
Carrie

Thank you Carrie for pointing me in the right direction! I'll dust off my copies of the CM books and start studying. I have a lot to learn and lots of growing to do. I have a feeling my children might take more naturally to narration than I do if I can guide them correctly. I've spent years trying to be more concise and less descriptive, putting things in my own words, so this is a challenge. Hopefully, I'm ready for it!

[mom23]

This thread has been very helpful! Thank you all!!

[my3sons]

What a wonderful discussion here! Carrie - thank you for taking the time to share this! This information is so valuable and helpful.

Patty - I was just thinking that the topic of a book can really make a difference as to how "personal" each person can be with his/her narration. One of the marks of an excellent living book is the author is usually passionate about what he/she has written. They are inspired because the topic they are writing about is a passion of theirs. They also know a lot about it. Obviously we probably won't be as knowledgable or as passionate about it as they are, but we can consciously pay attention to parts of the book that evoke some emotion or spark some special interest in us as we read. Then, within our modeling a narration, we can make sure to inject that sense of wonder or piqued kind of interest into our words as we narrate. Really almost anything from the Bible inspires me such this way these days, and many of HOD's books have some type of Biblical reference in them. Perhaps listening with an ear for that instead of necessarily with an ear for just the main points could help you be able to inject some of your own personality into your narrations? I know that train of thought has helped me become more animated when I narrate. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[my3sons]

I found Riley's first oral narration, as well as some of his later ones and thought I'd share them here:

Riley Kenneth Grosz's First Oral Narration
Book: Abraham Lincoln
Oral Narration – I started him off with the italic part.

In Springfield, Abe hitched up his horse and went to the store of Joshua Speed. He gave him his own bed. He married a girl. And then they got their own house. And then they had 3 little boys – noisy boys!

RILEY

Riley’s Oral Narration
Apple and the Arrow
p. 48-50

All of the friends were in their house, and then he said, “Everyone, be quiet! I know you want to know what happened.” And Wolfgang said that the great Gessler had drowned.

And everybody shouted, “Hooray!”

And then Grandfather said, ”Everyone please be quiet and please go back to your own homes. Hedwig needs some time alone.”

So everybody went out, and then it started to rain again. When the rain hit the chimney, it sounded like a clock going tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

And then the rain stopped, and then soon all went to bed. Hedwig let Prinz sleep on the rug beside the fireplace, just this once. And in the morning, they got up, had a great breakfast, and at noon they heard a hard knocking on the door. Walter jumped up from his bed! And saw his father burst into the door! They ran to him saying, “Father, father, father, how did you get out?”

Then Hedwig said, “Don’t you see your father needs some rest! He will talk to you later and tell you later.”


RIley's Narration on Mr. Popper's Penguins:
The crowds were standing in line for 1 or 2 miles long, just to get tickets to see the Popper’s Performing Penguins! Now when the piano player, the girl, didn’t want the penguins up on the stage while she played the piano, but then they discovered a different way to the stage. And Mr. Popper said, “I’m not going up there to get those penguins!”

Bill said, “We’d better catch them before they go up there and chew all of the strings off the guitars.”

So, Mrs. Popper said, “I’ll go up.” And then the penguins hid under the girl piano player’s skirts, and then she shrieked! And that was NOT part of the note written in the music.

And then they were on their way to Boston. They went to Mexico and Minneapolis, and Stillwater. Now they are going to Boston. Now the penguins are getting a little crabby, so they now ordered shrimp again because fish was too expensive. They ordered canned shrimp, and Mr. Popper said, “We only allow canned shrimp for these penguins.”

The president said that any store wherever they were staying would give them free shrimp, so now they are going to Boston, and the crowd was 1 mile long, just waiting for tickets.

In Christ,
Julie

[my3sons]

Here's Riley's latest oral narration:

In Christ,
Julie

[pjdobro]

Thank you Julie! That does help. I'll try more to focus on the feeling that the author is evoking versus the details for my own narration. That should help.

I have begun reading some of the Charlotte Mason references that Carrie shared and I realized that I probably had the good narration schooled right out of me. I have been trained to get to the point, share the details, and nothing more. I feel like I've been pushing my dc more towards that as well so I'm really thankful this discussion has come up. Hopefully I can correct the error of my ways and not school the innate ability to narrate out of my children. Thank you all so much for sharing your children's narrations. They are very impressive and has given me an idea of what I need to be looking for in my children's narration.

[Heather4Him]

WOW, what an awesome topic!!! Carrie and Julie, thank you both SO SO much for sharing your kids' narrations!! It (like others have mentioned) shows me how far we have to go, but also gives a great "picture" of what to expect (and even what I can show our dd so she knows what to strive for as well).
Right now, I would be happy to have Carrie's son's "summary narration"!!

This is so excellent--so again, thank you!

[abrightmom]

I want to bump this thread up because it is so helpful! Someone kindly linked me to it and I can't believe I missed it. I was there in the beginning but somehow forgot to keep checking it and WOW! So many practical helps and examples. Definitely worth bookmarking for future reference.

[Mercy]

I know people have mentioned how to save a post, but I really don't see a button anywhere!!

This is a great thread! Julie, thank you for sharing those! It reminded me that I used to go to the computer and type as my son would narrate to me and I think it really concretes it better for them, kwim?

And, I have my cm books tucked somewhere in the garage...guess I need to dust them off again. Lol!

Mercy

[Mercy]

Ooooh, I found it, I found it! It's way down on the very bottom on the left-hand side....It says "bookmark" and has a lil red star inside of the logo.
mercy

[Heather4Him]

Ooooh, I found it, I found it! It's way down on the very bottom on the left-hand side....It says "bookmark" and has a lil red star inside of the logo.
mercy

Oh, thanks for posting this! I didn't realize we could do that here. I was just saving favorite posts in my regular computer bookmarks/favorites.