Teaching Shakespeare

Elizabethan England.  A study of it would be incomplete and well, soul-less, without The Bard.......We have had a flavorful two weeks learning about Elizabeth I, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.  Talk about bad behavior!  Those Tudors were shameless.  But Elizabeth, aka "Good Queen Bess" loved the theatre, especially Shakespeare.  Who wouldn't?  History, Comedy, Tragedy......Murder, Mistaken Identity, Men Dressed As Women Dressed As Men (Twelfth Night), and of course, lots of dueling.

I started with a read-aloud selection, "William Shakespeare & The Globe" by Aliki.  Don't you just love Aliki?  I grew up seeing her books featured on Reading Rainbow nearly every week.  This book introduces Shakespeare and tells about his youth and the early days of the travelling theatres, which eventually led to a permanent theatre being built to perform his plays. 

I had also purchased "Who Was William Shakespeare?" from the "Who Was?" series of childrens' biographies.  Once we read the Aliki selection, it seems we had covered the material pretty well. 

We used Lois Burdett's "Shakespeare Can Be Fun!" series as we dove right into MacBeth.  Lois Burdett teaches Shakespeare to children as young as 2nd grade and has them illustrate and summarize the play in their own words throughout the book.  The play is condensed to its essence and retold in an appealing rhyming verse, while retaining some of the most famous phrases from the original play.  Macbeth is the perfect selection to make Shakespeare seem "cool" to boys.  It's easy to identify with Macbeth.  He already had some power, but when presented with the idea that he could have more, he became prideful.  It didn't help that he had married someone even more greedy and self-righteous than himself.  Between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, there weren't many people left in Scotland that they hadn't killed or plotted to have killed and in the end....well, you'll have to read it.

I found this really cute summarization of Hamlet for kids.  It pretty much says it all, but there's no way we're going to miss watching the Mel Gibson/Glenn Close version, which came in the mail today in a little red envelope!  Hurray!  Watch this clip and see what you think.  It piqued the interest of both of my boys.  They begged me to order the movie so they could see the exciting swordfighting/poison wine scene in the end!

If you live in Britain, you are lucky enough to have the series, Horrible Histories!  They have a humorous video clip on nearly every stage of European history, including The Plague, Henry VIII (divorced, beheaded, and died, divorced, beheaded, survived....I'm Henry VIII, I had six sorry wives....some would say I ruined their lives..).  For the rest of us, we have grainy, somewhat shaky recorded versions of the series on YouTube.  Still, they are so good, I've used them for our Middle Ages/Renaissance studies.  You can't even purchase them in the U.S. and if you go straight to the Horrible Histories website, you are unable to view the videos if you live outside Britain.  I'm not happy about this.  Someone please fix it. 

For their final Shakespeare project, the kids are developing an elaborate stagefighting video, complete with fake blood, daggers and choreographed fencing.  Stay tuned for the video!  Of course, they can't rightly stagefight in camo shorts and a t-shirt, so I may be breaking out the sewing machine and fashioning some Elizabethan duds.

Movies of Yore

We have come to the end of our Renaissance study and I wanted to make sure I mentioned some of the fantastic films we have enjoyed!

We really liked Joan of Arc, the 1999 version starring Leelee Sobieski and Jacqueline Bissett.  Netflix didn't carry this, so I got a 30-day trial membership to Blockbuster Online just to receive it in the mail.  We really, really enjoyed it, but split it up over 2 days since it was long.  They do a fantastic job showing Joan's calling, her passion for leading the French to defeat the English and help Charles VII realize his place on the throne (played by Neil Patrick Harris in a terrible bowl haircut). 

The memory work for this week was....."During the Hundred Years' War, Joan of Arc and King Charles VII led the French to defeat the English in the Battle of Orleans.  In the late 1340's, rats carrying The Plague killed one in three Europeans."

During a study of the Reformation and Martin Luther, we rented the film "Luther".  It stars Joseph Fiennes (of Shakespeare in Love) and Alfred Molina (your kids might recognize him as Dr. Octopus from Spiderman 2).  If you are studying the Reformation, it would be a great way to bring the story to life.  It's available on Netflix and you can read the review here.  It is PG-13 for unscrupulous behavior by a few cardinals and some burning at the stake by those who possess Luther's writing. I felt like it was a great way to show how the people of Europe were used to a message of hellfire and brimstone until Martin Luther came on the scene.  He preached a message of a loving Heavenly Father and believed that everyone should be able to read the scriptures for themselves. 

The memory sentence that the boys memorized this week (thank you, Classical Conversations teachers' guide) was......

"In 1517, Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation by printing the 95 Theses, which made Pope Leo X excommunicate him."  (of course, we make up an awesome song and hand movements to help them AND ME remember this forevermore).  Songs are the key to memorization.

Of course, I'm watching Showtime's The Tudors to get more insight into the time period of Henry VIII and Martin Luther (I never knew that Henry used Martin Luther's new teachings to justify his divorce from his first wife Katherine of Aragon).  I'm afraid the kids will never see this while under my roof (mature doesn't even begin to describe some of the courtier's behavior, especially the King), but Mama is enjoying it!