How To Teach Your Child Shakespeare The Fun Way
We are just about to introduce Shakespeare into our homeschool, and I am so happy about it. I wanted to share with you how to teach your child Shakespeare so you too can enjoy it.
Learning has to be fun in our homeschool, so we have found the perfect way to teach Shakespeare! Carry on reading for the best tips ever.
In fact, he loves it so much that he asked for some Shakespeare books for Christmas and a Shakespeare-inspired picture for his bedroom wall!
My son absolutely loves reading, check out our favorite book lists for kids there are over 20 book lists included for kids of all ages, for school, for reading, and for every season. Plus lots of free book printables.
Check out our top 10 Shakespeare books for kids that the kids are going to love.
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Fun Ways to Introduce Shakespeare To Kids
Detailed below are our favorite ways of teaching Shakespeare to older elementary grades and middle school.
Online Shakespeare Course
Shakespeare doesn’t have to just be for high school, although we are taking a high school course, we have easily adapted it for grade 6 (year 7 in the UK).
We have found the most amazing Introduction to Shakespeare course from Music in our Homeschool. It is a paid course ($37 / £25), but wow it is certainly worth it. It is a 10-week course with lots of videos included (this always works best for us.)
The 10-week course covers the following:
- Iambic pentameter and how to scan a speech
- Poetry versus prose
- How to pronounce Shakespeare
- Shakespeare’s life
- The Globe Theater and Elizabethan theater in general
- Shakespeare insults
- Monologues and Soliloquies
- Practice techniques for memorizing and performing Shakespeare
- Watch one of his plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Perform an act based on Star Wars but written in Shakespearian language and technique!
I highly recommend this course, and my son is having a blast completing it. Download the Shakespeare introductory course now you won’t regret it. We are having so much fun, and I’m learning so much too.
While taking this course we are also using Curiosity Stream to watch Curious Minds: Shakespeare, at $20 for a full year, we highly recommend it. Check out our Curiosity Stream review to see what else we watch.
Shakespeare For Children
Whether you follow the above course or make your own unit study you need to at the very least purchase these two books:
How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. Ken Ludwig provides a wonderful book to read together with your children. It is not a dry boring book, but really engaging and helps you and your child memorize passages and understand Shakespeare in a really easy and fun way.
William Shakespeare’s Star Wars. My son was so pleased when he saw the Star Wars book, he is totally obsessed with all things Star Wars at the minute. So to introduce Shakespeare in a subject that he already loves is just fantastic. Below are all the Shakespeare books we have, but I imagine this will continue to grow. The Displate on the wall was a gift he purchased himself with Christmas money.
But there are loads of other Shakespeare books for kids that we recommend;
To Wee Or Not To Wee is another favorite. My son got this for Christmas when he was about 8 or 9, and he devoured it. Of course, any type of potty humor is right down his street!
Manga Shakespeare. We purchased a few of these manga books while visiting the UK recently, and is another great way to read Shakespeare in a way that the kids will thoroughly enjoy.
The Shakespeare Stories by Tony Ross is another favorite. There are 16 small books that are great for younger readers. They are beautifully illustrated as you would expect from Tony Ross (as he illustrated the Horrid Henry series and a number of the David Walliams books)
Usborne Complete Book of Shakespeare is another classic kid Shakespeare book. We just love all of the Usborne books, and this doesn’t disappoint. It covers all of the Shakespeare plays and includes short details about the main characters and famous and memorable quotations from the play.
Who Was William Shakespeare? is a great way to learn about Shakespeare.
Shakespeare Insult Generator mix and match over 150,000 insults in Bard’s own words.
How to Teach Your Child Shakespeare – Unit Studies
Making Shakespeare Important is an 18-week course for high school students. Looking at Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar
My Teaching Library has a number of courses on Shakespeare plays including Twelfth Night and Hamlet.
Charlotte Mason Music and Shakespeare Bundle include the 10-week course we are taking and discussed above.
Simply Shakespeare is a 32-week course for grades 3-9 with over 12 units. The course looks at all of the most recognizable Shakespeare plays, such as a Midsummers Night’s Dream, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night.
Outschool has a number of live online classes talking about Shakespeare, including over 30 different classes you can join. Not a full course but certainly great classes that can supplement the curriculum.
Shakespeare Play
We recently visited family in England and managed to go to Shakespeares’ birthplace and saw Henry VI at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford Upon Avon.
Now I know if you are in the USA like us it is not that easy to achieve, however, there are lots of traveling theatres. I am sure you can find a Shakespeare play near you. We saw a Midsummers Night’s Dream at the park for free two years ago, which was amazing.
Introduce Shakespeare for FREE
The Shakespeare Globe has hundreds of free learning resources
Crash Course Youtube – Shakespeare’s early days
Crash Course Youtube – Shakespeare’s Sonnets
See where Shakespeare sits in the periods in English literature, a free literary timeline printable.
Shakespeare Games
We love playing educational board games in our homeschool and have managed to find some educational Shakespeare games too.
Shakespeare’s “Insults” Playing Cards as we love playing card games these cards was an obvious choice.
The Parlor Game Shakespeare we are yet to play this, but one review likened it to Apples to Apples, which is a favorite here.
Great Shakespearean Deaths Card Game for kids over the age of 12.
Munchkin Shakespeare Deluxe is suitable for children aged 10 and older.
Brainbox Shakespeare (UK only) as we can’t get this one I can’t vouch for it, however, we used to have a number of the Brainbox games and they were great, so I am assuming this one will be too.
If you are looking for gifts for Shakespeare lovers check out our top 30, perfect for adults and teens.
Let me know if you have any further ideas on how to teach your child Shakespeare in the comments below.
Last Updated on 10 April 2023 by homeschoolof1