Tudor England (1485-1603), and an Introduction to Shakespeare
We have been learning about Tudor England, which started with Henry VII and...
We learned about the explorers from England during this period.
I started my younger boys with their first introduction to Shakespeare this week.
We learned about who Shakespeare was, where and when he lived.
We looked at the Globe theatre.
We read Bruce Coville's version of Romeo and Juliet. I like his work the best because he uses Shakespeare's own words as much as possible and they are illustrated beautifully. For kids a bit older, you could use Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare or Nesbit's Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare, because they do a great job of describing the plot and so we focus on what is going on in the story and why. At this stage, I read sections of Shakespeare's plays as well, but too much only fatigue them until they are comfortable with the language. I sometimes do copywork from the section we focus on. By high school, perhaps earlier, you can begin reading Shakespeare's own words. This is a good time to watch the plays on DVD as well. If you have a family of mixed ages, I will let the little ones sit in for as long as they wish, which varies considerably depending on the child. They can always leave if it becomes too much for them without any feeling that they have failed.
We made puppets by making color copies of the characters from the book and cutting them out, but you could buy puppets instead.
We made playbills from the printing set from this kit. It says that the kit is for ages 8-13, and I would agree with that as it was a little tricky for my younger children, so I wouldn't advise it for students under 8.
And then the boys did a narration of the story using the puppets.
