We started year one last week, gently.
How did it go?
A little challenging for my oldest.
Phonics, math, copy work, and free readings,
there was no change.
Narration.
This was our challenge.
Narration was a new concept for my son
and frankly for me too.
We struggled.
I tried reading a paragraph at a time.
This did not help
especially with the more difficult readings.
But, reading two or three sentences at a time
did.
This made for slow going.
We did not get through all the readings of the week.
We will try to catch up this week.
Did my son enjoy the readings?
Yes and no.
Doing the narrations seemed to frustrate him.
The stories do not read smoothly
due to the frequent pausing with doing the narrations.
The dots did not connect for him.
So, to try to eliminate his frustration,
I read the readings through without
stopping so he could hear the story flow.
This was done after narrating completed.
Dots connected then.
How did it go?
A little challenging for my oldest.
Phonics, math, copy work, and free readings,
there was no change.
Narration.
This was our challenge.
Narration was a new concept for my son
and frankly for me too.
We struggled.
I tried reading a paragraph at a time.
This did not help
especially with the more difficult readings.
But, reading two or three sentences at a time
did.
This made for slow going.
We did not get through all the readings of the week.
We will try to catch up this week.
Did my son enjoy the readings?
Yes and no.
Doing the narrations seemed to frustrate him.
The stories do not read smoothly
due to the frequent pausing with doing the narrations.
The dots did not connect for him.
So, to try to eliminate his frustration,
I read the readings through without
stopping so he could hear the story flow.
This was done after narrating completed.
Dots connected then.
What of retention?
I wondered about this, but Sunday
my son asked questions about some of the readings.
I smiled as I answered.
Dots connecting.
Today is the first day of week two.
Starting gently,
that is us.
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3 comments:
It will come! Narration is sometimes still a struggle for Elizabeth who is in AO2 now. She gets silly and or acts tired when it comes to narration. But she knows she's not getting out of it, but so she'll buckle down eventually. She continually amazes me with what she remembers down the road. She told me today, "Remember that history reading where the boy celebrated his father's death?" I totally do not remember, but she at least made a connection somewhere. Going back over the previous reading really helps too. That helps me retain and gives us some legs to start walking through the rest of the story on.
happy not back to school!
or un-back to school?
love the cardinal pic, I have serious bird envy here in So. Ca
What an exciting place you are at right now. I do so hope that a CM curriculum works as well for your family as it does for mine.
Narration gets easier quite quickly. May I encourage you not to stop too often during readings, but rather to begin with easier books first. Things like Andrew Lang fairy tales are incredibly wordy if your ds is not used to the rich CM literature. Likewise books like Burgess are packed full of information, which makes them difficult to narrate.
50 Famous Stories is a good one to narrate, as are the Hollings books. Little House is good too. it is a free read, but is good for practice narrations. Aesop is good, but I found that often the moral was lost on Jemimah until I explained it later. I always encouraged her to think one up though - sometimes they were charming!!
Hope this helps.
Thank you for your nice words on my blog - we love MEP in our home!!
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