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. You can find my Shakespeare printable templates on the Freebies Page.
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?
Your ideas look great. We read the Garfield versions of Shakespeare for my younger kids, and “the real thing” for my older ones, but they felt they were missing out on the chance for peer discussion at a deeper level. That led me to start an on-line Renaissance Lit course for homeschooled teens. Maybe other people are wanting something similar? http://boyschooling.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/registration-time-for-cm-live-september.html