True Confession Time. I did narration wrong for several years. I thought it was simply

a matter of plopping down on the couch, opening the book, and reading the passage, and

then I would look at the children and say, tell me what happened in today's story.

It wasn't until I dug a little deeper that I realized there were some simple things that I could do to

set them up for success and help make narration lessons more enjoyable. Let me share those

five simple steps with you. Welcome to the Simply Charlotte Mason podcast. I'm Sonia Schaefer. It's tempting to think that we can just open a book, start reading, and ask one of the children to tell us what happened and be done. But such a process leaves out a couple of key components that can make the difference between just going through the motions and

real learning.

The difference between a frustrating lesson and an enjoyable lesson.

Usually when a homeschool parent is frustrated with narration, it's because she's leaving

out one of these five steps. So let's walk through them.

Step number one, pick a good living book. This is where it all starts. Some books are

well-nigh impossible to narrate, even for an experienced narrator. If you're using one of those, you won't make much progress.

You want to make sure the book you are reading touches the emotions, fires the imagination,

and paints a picture that you can see in your mind's eye as the author describes what is

happening. This type of living book, one that gives ideas,

not just dry facts, will pave the way for a smooth narration lesson. What's the difference?

Well, let me give you an example. Here's an event conveyed with just the facts.

Sources report that an unnamed mail was assaulted near the main highway.

Several items in his possession are now missing.

A male of mixed nationality found him and brought him to a local hotel to recover and has offered to reimburse

any expenses incurred, according to the hotel manager. Now, here's the same event conveyed

in a living narrative. A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.

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