March 15, 2009 - Shakespeare Studies for Our Homeschool
Sprite loves Shakespeare! Of course, she only know retellings of his plays, but the stories are engaging, and that's what she loves about Shakespeare. When she's a bit older, she can begin to read the original plays and learn to love Shakespeare's language without the added burden of learning characters and plot lines. Those she already understands!
We have a smattering of books, but mostly we use free Librivox recordings of the public domain retellings of Shakespeare's plays by Nesbit and the Lambs. (For all these links and printables, visit Shakespeare for Children.)
Each time we study a play (about one per month), I have Sprite write a narration of the story line. Then she copies it into a simple one fold minibook. Over time, we can make a Shakespeare lapbook.
For this one, I typed her narration for her.
Sprite is 9 1/2, so I'm slowly adding more lengthy written narrations. We still do a lot of oral narrations however.
We also watch the BBC's Shakespeare Animated Tales videos as a fun way to recap our study of each play. You can watch all of them for free on YouTube, but a good friend loaned me the entire set on DVD!
How do you incorporate Shakespeare into your homeschool, if you do at all?
Comments
March 16, 2009 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Dana @ School For
We haven't done much Shakespeare recently, but thanks for the reminder! We've enjoyed books by Lois Burdett. There is one that is called Shakespeare Can Be Fun and then there are books about quite a few of the individual plays.
I'll have to check out your resources as there are several I've never used!
Dana, www.alexml.blogspot.com
March 17, 2009 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Anonymous
I haven't yet incorporated Shakespeare but I have been collecting resources for some time now. If and when you ever get to Oregon - you must go to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. DH and I have been going for years now... and hope to take the kiddos next year when our youngest turns 5 (minimum age requirement)... partially why I haven't started sharing with them just yet.
When we go in June - I'll be certain to pick up a few things for Sprite!
:D
Makita
4twinklingstars.blogspot.com
March 18, 2009 - Gotta' love Shakespeare
Posted by freedom4educ
It's great that you are introducing Sprite to the basics, so later it will be easier to really enjoy his works. I had the same idea. Since I am an Usborne Books consultant, we have started with an Usborne book titled "Stories from Shakespeare". It may not be the best, but it will at least give them an idea about what Shakespeare is about. So far, we've only read "A Midsummer Night's Dream" which they really enjoyed--especially since they had a mild intro. from an episode of Disney Channel's "The Suite Life" where the characters were supposed to be doing the play. Believe it or not, that really helped me to get a 12 and a 9 year old boy interested in Shakespeare!
I'll have to check out some of the materials you recommend when we start a full study of the works. Thanks!!
March 28, 2009 - Molytail
Posted by Anonymous
I love how she summed the whole R&J thing up in one sentence there - "Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy" .. *grin*
We've never sudied Shakespeare here (yet) .. but I'm browsing the squidoo link right now...
http://tailsgonewest.blogspot.com/
April 16, 2009 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Aadel
Ooh, now you have just inspired me! I absolutely love Shakespeare, and now I am excited about sharing that with my girls!
