Narration is a journey. You progress a step at a time.
“What do you see?” is a good question to ask while playing outside, going to a park, looking at a butterfly or a flower. Asking “I wonder…..”
why it looks like this?
does that? what it’s doing?
how it does that?
what will happen next?
how it got here?
Bite your tongue and count to 10 before talking and filling in the silences. Give children time to think, to process ideas and words to share them.
Let them draw some narrations, act some out, and recreate others in 3-D with blocks, clay, toys (I learned to give a time limit on how much time could be spent on this). Keep a scrapbook and take photographs of those projects. Use the narration jar idea.
You narrate sometimes and ask them to add any details you missed.
Write down some of his narrations and keep them in the folder, scrapbook, for you, so you can see progress.
Keep lessons really short.
Do some ‘scaffolding’ or preparing the lesson- introduce a reading by asking a review question, which could be as simple as, “Where were we?” and then say something to salt the oats, like, ” I wonder what he’ll do next? I wonder if we’ll learn why that happens? What do you think will happen next?” and sometimes read a bit ahead and give a hint, “remember when you cut your hand last week? Well, today in our reading we will meet somebody with a hurt hand. let’s see what happened.” Or “do you ever feel frightened and worried and you don’t know what to do? We’re going to read about a time Betsy felt like that. Let’s see what she does…”
Limit screens. Go experience parks, zoos, museums, and include much singing and snuggling.
Give yourself, and your child, some grace and don’t be discouraged. Remember the adage that slow and steady wins the race. Steady, small steps add up to progress over time.