Narration work in Little Hearts for 7 yo - Ideas

[abrightmom]

Ladies,

My 5 year old is changing so so so much this summer!! I *think* we may be able to start Little Hearts with her though I will consult with my husband about it first. I'd really love to use LHFHG with my 5 and 7 year old this year so that I can teach two guides instead of 3 my first HOD year.....

That being said.....

My 7 year old would benefit from some consistent narration practice this year during LHFHG as he places much more solidly in Beyond. I was perusing the LHFHG guide again today and I'm not sure how to fold narration into the guide. 5 year olds are not expected to begin narration so I can understand the guide not including so much practice in this skill. Do you have any suggestions or ideas for me? Honestly, it can't be that hard and I'm sure once someone tells me what to do I'll feel silly even asking.... Can I simply ask him to narrate anything I am reading? Does Carrie target specific types or reading or does she spread the narration practice across the subjects? I don't have enough HOD experience yet to have noticed any patterns. We've only used 3 units in Bigger so far.

Thank-you .

[MelInKansas]

I'm only 3 units into Beyond Little Hearts so that's my experience so far with the narration. Toward the end of Little Hearts there is more of them describing what has happened in the reading, beginning, middle, and end. Or talking about key points, asking what happened to the main character, or something like that. You could do this with your 5 and 7 year olds and the Burgess books by maybe having your 7 YO describe what was in the chapter you read (this may be very easy as they are very short chapters) and then have the 5 YO answer the questions in the guide (or have both do the activity/sentence and drawing). Or another thing you could do is look for some of the suggested storytime titles in Beyond and read those to your kids also. Because Beyond has just suggested titles for each genre (the lists are in the Beyond guide though so not sure how you would get those, the storytime packs they sell for Beyond are just a few of the suggested titles) the guidance for the teacher is very limited. Things like "discuss a problem the character had and how they solved it." "Draw a picture of the main character and something they are doing." So if you really want to work on the narration you could either buy the Beyond guide and do that as extra with him (again there are so many suggested titles it would not be at all difficult to go through a different set of books once you actually do use Beyond). You could also have your 7 YO do the easy spelling list in Beyond this year and then the harder spelling list next year. These are just some thoughts off the top of my head. Also if your 7 YO is ready for the Singapore 1A math the suggested extra activities are in the Beyond guide. But then again... you said you didn't want to do 3 guides . So the easiest thing to do would be to just make your 7 YO narrate more in the reading of the Burgess books. But then again I don't think adding some of the things I've mentioned would be that much more work either. Those things don't take much time, and storytime reading is something my kids would do for hours if we had the time to do that. You'd still have them combined in History, Scripture memory, Rhyme in motion (which turns into poetry in Beyond), and of course they'd be on their own level in reading, writing, and math. Little Hearts is really a very rich program, so you could just try it as is and see how it goes.

[abrightmom]

Melissa,

Thanks for all of your suggestions! We are most definitely doing 1st grade skill work for this guy with spelling, language lessons, math, etc. I'm just toying with the idea that maybe, just maybe, I can try combining my middlers. Up until now my 5 year old hasn't been ready for LHFHG. She is maturing this summer and I'm considering combining once again rather than putting the kids in their own guides. If we are able to combine in LHFHG, the only thing missing for him is regular narration practice as LHFHG doesn't seem to include that like the later guides do. My 7 year old is actually a very good narrator and I want to continue the practice with him. I am looking for an experienced recommendation on how to include narration practice within LHFHG (only for a 7 year old, not for my 5 year old). Perhaps, as I read the books, it will become obvious to me what readings to ask for a narration from....

[my3sons]

I think this could work to combine your 5 and 7 yo, and just up for the 7 yo in the areas you mentioned. For narration practice, you could just use Day 2 and Day 5's plans in the Storytime box, as well as the excellent narration tips in the Appendix. The plans in these boxes lay out how to model and teach oral narration successfully. I still use the ideas from them if I see an area that one of my sons need to work on improving. The ideas work with any book, so I think I would just choose one of the Beyond Storytime sets. I would do the Burgess books with the 5 and 7 yo, and reserve the Beyond books for your 7 yo to focus on learning oral narration skills. Then, next year in Beyond, you can just use a different set of Storytime books with the two of them, as Beyond has 3 Storytime set options (class, boy interest, girl interest). HTH!

In Christ,
Julie