History narrations

One of my goals for this school year-- well, for every school year- was to be more diligent in history narrations.  It has really been a good thing for all of us, and and here are a few things I like about it:

1. It requires that I know what they're reading, so that I can know if they are narrating well.  And I have found that I love reading along with them as they're learning these things.

2. It requires me to stop and truly pay attention.  No mmhmm-ing while I'm busy doing something else.  I have to really tune in to what they're saying.

3. My kids- especially my boys- LOVE it.  They get to have my undivided attention and talk and talk and talk.... ;)  (In fact when I first handed out their history lesson plans, Isaac read weeks ahead, which is a lot of reading.  I finally told him that he needed to stop, because I really didn't have time to listen to him narrate for that many hours.  ;)

I think doing history narrations has its challenges, too, the main one being that it requires quite a bit of that listening time on my part.  If all three of my kids are doing history on the same day (and they are, twice per week), and they are all reading from a few different books, that equates to a lot of narrating. 

One of the ways I addressed this is that I've assigned drawn narrations for one of their books (The Story of the Greeks).  The chapters/stories are fairly short and easy to narrate with a single picture, so I printed off some of these free printable pages.  Now instead of telling me all about this book with their words, they get to do it through drawing, which they love.  :)  Win-win.  :)

Some of Isaac's drawings