Now that the kids are getting older I wanted to expose them to some Shakespeare.  I  remember very little from my high school years about Shakespeare and I did not have a great understanding or love of it then, nor do I now.  My hope is that by exposing them to the stories at an earlier age, with age appropriate materials,  that they will become familiar with them, thus having an easier time with them in full Shakespearean Language later on.

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare

One of my favorite sites to use for little add-ons and unit studies is CurrClick. That is where I found a copywork book for Quotations from Shakespeare’s Plays from Living Books.  That, along with the book Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare for Children is where I am stemming from this year.  We are going to read each story in the book , discuss them briefly, and write a short narration about each one.

Chloe also expressed an interest in “seeing” some of these plays.  We are starting with A MidSummer Nights Dream next week so I found a children’s version on DVD at the library for the kids to watch.  You can also find Shakespeare the Animated Tales on YouTube that we are going to try as well.

This week we are starting with a brief look at Shakespeare himself.  The kids were totally distraught at the fact that they could not write down a concrete date  for his birth.  This led to a discussion about history and how we don’t always know everything because our means of record keeping were not at sophisticated back then.

Check out this Shakespeare for Kids post with tons of resources to help you share Shakespeare with your children!

Painting Shakespeare

Upon completion of William Shakespeare’s biography, Jayden said he wanted to “paint” a picture of him.  I thought he just wanted to color a coloring sheet, but no, he meant paint.

Instructions:

1. We printed out a black-line bust of William Shakespeare for him to work from.  He enlisted his sister to help him do a pencil drawing first.
2. Then they collaborated on the painting of this portrait as well.
3. To get skin tone colored paint they used google and found that they needed to mix a lot of white, some brown, and a  dab of red.  I think Chloe was surprised at how much white she really needed, and could have even used more for a lighter skin tone.

More with Shakespeare