October 18, 2009

Narration bookmark

One of the biggest components of a Charlotte Mason education is narration, or having your kids tell you what they understood about what you read. In the earlier elementary years it's mostly verbal with some drawings here and there. As they get older they start writing those narrations down.

My boys are still in the elementary years so most of their narrations are verbal. But here's a little secret I have to share - I often forget to ask for narrations. We just cruise through the books and we get to the end of the day and I hit my head on the wall when I remember that I forgot to ask.

To help myself remember to ask I made some narration bookmarks. They include a list of questions or 'prompts'. I put one in each book we're reading so that I'm reminded of it each and every time. Right now they're on white card stock, mostly because that's what I have right now. But they can easily be put on colored card stock or cutesy scrapbooky paper, or whatever. You can laminate them or not. You can have your kids decorate the edges and the back to make it more personal. Whatever, I'll never know. Unless you want to leave a comment and tell me (and that would be cool).

So, without further ado....here are two links for downloading the narration bookmarks.

This first one is for the larger size. There are 3 per sheet and this works best for big books.

This second file is for the smaller size; there are 4 per sheet and they fit best in smaller books.

In the hopes that this will help someone else who struggles to remember to ask for narration! Please tell me I'm not the only one....

16 comments:

  1. This is truly wonderful! I printed this out. I had made narration flip cards for my kids...but my daughter is getting tired of the flipping..lol. Seriously, she would much perfer this bookmark that she can just have on hand. Wonderful idea, thank you so much!

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  2. You're welcome, Richele. I'm so glad someone else can use it.

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  3. Wonderful! I will definitely add this as a link on my blog.

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  4. Thankyou so much for these bookmarks! I might even slip one into the read-aloud my husband is reading at the moment, it will remind him to ask the girls questions!

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  5. I forget sometimes, too. Thanks for these links. :)

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  6. Those look wonderful, thank you!

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  7. Fun, colorful reminders! Thanks for the freebies!

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  8. Great idea!
    Thanks for sharing .. and I'll pass it on too. *grin!*
    alecat

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  9. thank you so much for the bookmarks!! i can't wait to put them in every book we are reading!!!

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  10. This is a wonderful tool! Thank you!

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  11. These bookmarks are such a blessing! Thank you!

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  12. Thank you! This is awesome and I was pretty clueless on the different ways to get my kids to narrate, now I have a whole a bookmark of ideas :)

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  13. This is so great! I always forget to ask them to narrate when we read at lunch time. Thank you so much!

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