The ART of Narration: CM Carnival

I just checked my email and found that the Simply Charlotte Mason blog hosted the CM Carnival this month on... guess what.... the Art of Narration, how providential. I can't wait to spend some time over my afternoon coffee soaking up some ideas in these articles, written by CM style homeschooling educators! Enjoy

Learning from Superman

Superman and I are wrestling with what could be a beautiful art of telling back what one has learned through reading or listening to a piece of literature. I find it amusing that he can tell me all sorts of information about certain things, things that have completely taken hold of his interest and imagination while other things he is an empty vessel. I understand that he is more likely to be captured by and own certain pieces of the stories he reads if they grab his attention but I long for him to pull all pieces of the story together to give him the BIG picture so that it is not in a bunch of interesting but seperate pieces that don't really fit together making it all a little obscure for him. I read Jeannie Fulbright's article for some encouragement on Narration, here is some thing I pulled out from it to use today and I am seeing the fruit as we speak or I type:

Remember that the teacher always learns the most. Narration employs this philosophy. For the child becomes the teacher! It is often good to use words such as, “Teach me what you just learned,” or “Now, you be the teacher! Teach me all about that!”

Let him be the teacher... BRILLANT. He is enjoying himself with the idea that he is teaching me what he is learning and I can see that he is taking in a lot of the information so that he can relay it to me correctly, it is so cute and also effective.