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Pre-Play Studies Ambleside Online suggests the use of Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare or Nesbit’s Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare to be read to early elementary children before they ever study an actual play. These books tell the stories of what happens in the plays in easier to understand language and in story, rather than play, form. I think these are an excellent introduction to Shakespeare’s works and we still occasionally read one of the stories before doing one of the plays – that way we have a better idea of what is going on.
Beginning the Plays Ambleside Online begins the study of actual Shakespeare plays in Year 4. I have a difficult time reading and following some of his plays as an adult. I couldn’t imagine asking my Year 4 student (at age 11) to read it aloud and understand it. So, I was not very excited about starting to read his plays. I bought the plays we were supposed to read for the year and started reading one of them. Not far into it I realized that we were going to need to find another way to do this. There was no way I could read some of these words aloud so I knew my children couldn’t!
Plays were Acted not Read I realized that these plays were meant to be seen not read – especially not read by people tripping over every other word. So, whenever we can find a video recording of the play we are studying I preview it to determine its appropriateness for our children. Then, if its deemed appropriate, we all sit down and watch it together. We pause the video if the children start asking questions about what is going or if we feel something should be explained.
Instead of a Video If we can’t find an appropriate video, we listen to the play on audio book. We first started doing this when our daughter was the only one studying Shakespeare. She and I had a horrible time trying to read the play! I found the audio book of the play we happened to be studying at the library and borrowed it. We then would play the audio book while following along with the book.
A Love of Shakespeare is Born My daughter LOVED it! She started looking for more Shakespeare audios and asking us to preview other videos. She has borrowed a video of Twelfth Night repeatedly and listened to audio books of Shakespeare’s plays in her free time. Who knew Shakespeare could be so awesome? Certainly not her mother whose only exposure to Shakespeare had been a stumbling (and embarrassing) class read-through of Romeo and Juliet in nineth grade.
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