When our oldest daughter, Audrey, was about nine, I wanted to use a method in homeschooling

called narration. The idea is simple. You read a short passage to your child from a book,

and then ask them to tell it back to you in their own words.

Here's what happened, though. Every time I told Audrey, we'd be doing narration, and

then read to her, she'd freeze up. I actually think she listened less well to what I was reading.

And she knew I wanted a narration after. I would read a passage, and she would stare

as if in pain the whole time. Then I'd ask her to tell it back to me, and she'd basically

be an anxious ball of nerves and could remember almost nothing. I remember one time specifically.

I was reading Ethel Pachokis once upon a time Saints to all of my kids. They usually loved

these stories, and they would listen with rapt attention. And then I decided we should

do narrations of them and be good Charlotte Mason homeschoolers. And honestly, narration

ruined that book for them. While I knew my girls had been listening carefully and soaking

up the stories before I tried to have them narrate, as soon as I added narration to their

docket, they froze. Couldn't do it. The enjoyment of the story, their ability to listen to

what the story was actually about, just dissolved.

If you've been in homeschooling circles for long, you've probably heard about the concept

of narration. It's a method most widely associated with Charlotte Mason, who is a British

educator in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, who really dedicated her life to improving

the quality of children's education. Homeschoolers use her methods a lot. And I've gained a lot

of wisdom from learning Charlotte Mason methods, or as many of us call it a CM style of education.

One of the basic tenets of CM education is indeed narration. It's sort of Charlotte

Mason 101, honestly. The entire Charlotte Mason methodology rests on this idea of having

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