Hi, I have three children I'm doing TOG with. My middle child is 9 years old and this is our first week of doing TOG. He's reading the UG history selections and I'm curious as to how other moms do history discussions with their kids. Do you just sit and have them narrate their history core or in-depth books to you or do you just use the lapbooks that TOG provides to see what info they're learning, or are there other methods that you use to judge what they're learning? With my 8 year old LG student, I'm reading his history selections to him and asking him questions as we go along. With my dialectic 11 year old, I'm using the questions in the Student Activity Pages. I'm having my UG boy do all of his history reading alone because I just don't have time to read daily with him.
Thanks so much for any help you can provide!
Rebecca
Mom of five

I give my UG a copy of the Overview (p.6-7 of each week) for that week. She knows she should be able to discuss with me all the points listed under Student Threads for the LG and UG levels. She reads the books herself as she is a very capable reader, and the Student Thread topics give her the info she needs to be able to prepare for our discussions.

Learning to read to be able to discuss the Student Threads didn't come naturally. We had many many weeks where she read and never looked at the ST until our discussion. She had to learn (by constant reminding, unfortunately) that she had to prepare herself for the discussion. By the end of this year (3rd grade) she was getting much better and could recognize beforehand when she wasn't prepared to discuss something and go back to her books to find the info--even though that often still happened after I would remind her about our discussions. One day she won't need to be reminded!

Thank you so much for your response! That is very helpful advice, plus it encourages me to be patient with my kids as we're new to this and it's not what we're used to.

I suspect I will do for Year 3 what I did last year in Year 2. We read The History of US books aloud--for both UG and LG. We would discuss certain aspects as we read. Then we complete lap book activities--but selectively; I only do maybe 1/3 of the available activities, the ones I deem most crucial for our family. My main goal for my UG students is exposure, so our discussions are very informal.
Michele