heartofyourhouse posted: " I received a copy of Know and Tell by Karen Glass for Christmas and I'm currently halfway through reading it. It's a book all about the art of narration, which is a big part of home educating in the style of Charlotte Mason. I've found it very helpful; p"
I received a copy of Know and Tell by Karen Glass for Christmas and I'm currently halfway through reading it. It's a book all about the art of narration, which is a big part of home educating in the style of Charlotte Mason. I've found it very helpful; particularly drilling down to the heart of why narration is such a useful tool. There are also some very practical suggestions for implementing narration and the book is full of examples of oral and written narrations by children of different ages.
One of the points that Glass made in her book was that 'narration of some material should be requested for a second time at regular intervals'. Usually this involves a brief recap at the start of each lesson. E.g. Asking "what happened last time we read?" However, the PNEU schools, which were led by Charlotte Mason, also held end of term reviews where the children would be asked to narrate something from that term.
I thought we would give this end of term review a try before the Easter break as we were winding down. I was very encouraged that Herby was able to narrate things that she remembered from more than a few weeks before and I later tried to transcribe what I remembered of the narrations. I'll include some of them here. Part of the reason for using narration as a tool is because the narrator has to actively order the information in their mind so that they can tell it back. You can see that as Herby corrects herself in one of the narrations.
Tell me about some of the lines on a globe. There's the equator which is the hottest like on earth and there are some other lines that have writing which tell you how far away they are so you can tell how cold they are.
Tell me all you know about how Saul became King of the Israelites. God was a teacher and He made Saul king because someone else was rejected - no, that's not right - the Israelites didn't want God to be King so Saulwas made king but he was rejected and then David became king.
Tell me about how sunflowers make more sunflowers. I don't know... Well, inside a sunflower, when it's dead, there are seeds and you can plant some and they grow into sunflowers.
Tell me what you know about Van Gogh or Monet or tell me about one of their pictures. There was a picture of a boat with another bit with people on that was attached to the land and there were some trees. There was another picture of a train.
Tell me about how frogs make more frogs. The tadpoles grow into frogs. Well, they lay frogspawn and then they grow into tadpoles and swim in the water and then they grow back legs and then front legs and then they are frogs and they do it again.
We finished our year-long 1000 hours outside challenge before Easter. Unfortunately we didn't reach 1000 hours but we got to (approximately) 883 and I enjoyed tracking our time outdoors.
Herby requested to make something with a pocket. So, last term we decided to make a needlecraft booklet which is a trifold case with two pockets (one small pocket for holding scissors) and some felt for keeping pins and needles in. We followed instructions from a book by Debbie Shore and it turned out really well. The most difficult bit was sewing the velcro on at the end. I ended up bending one needle in the process but I did finally get them sewn on so that the booklet fastens securely. One finishing touch we might add is to cut the edge of the felt with pinking scissors.
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