Kalpana May 9, 2012, 20:57:36

I have my son narrate our hoistry readings and we use WWE which has quite a bit of narration. I haven’t had him formally narrate other things yet because it’s quite hard for him and I’m afraid that narrating too much will kill his love of reading. Similar to Paige, I’ll often just ask him about what he is reading but in a more do you like that book? What’s it about? kind of way rather than a formal narration. I do find that my son does better at finding the main points for short sections. It’s very tough for him to hear a whole chapter of Story of the World and tell me the main points but if I have him stop and narrate after every section he can do it better. I’m quite sure he couldn’t read a novel and tell me the most important points in a few sentences. He could reenact the entire plot and tell me lots of details but not summarize it. But I feel like that’s what we’re working towards. We use the Well-Trained Mind and many of SWB’s resources also. I’ve heard her lecture several times and the impression I got was that in the grammar years she doesn’t recommend trying to get kids to discover the meaning of a book. It’s more about having them be able to summarize the plot in a few sentences rather than look for deeper meaning at this age. So Charlotte’s Web is There was a pig named Wilbur. He made friends with a spider named Charlotte. She saved him from being killed. rather than It’s about friendship. The other thing I always find useful to remember when reading The Well-Trained Mind is that SWB is very open about the fact that it’s sort of her ideal recommendations but she doesn’t use it all or follow it all in her own homeschooling.