Showing posts with label Shakespeare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shakespeare. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Homeschool~ Poetry Study



Poetry.
Does it make you feel a bit apprehensive?
Are you convinced it is all full of thees and thous and incomprehensible language?
Does the idea of reading poetry bring you to a place of eye rolling and high school style anguish?

It doesn't have to be like that!


Hear me out on this. (Well, read me out on this. :)) Poetry is a valid and wonderful addition to your homeschool. Poetry can build listening skills, reading comprehension, and can be used to explain certain grammar techniques and phonics skills. The trick is to find valid age appropriate poetry that will keep the attention of your student and teach some beautiful literary appreciation as well.


To be fair, I am biased. I love words. I love reading words. I love placing words together. I love word games. You get the idea. When I was sixteen I got my first thesaurus. I think it was for English class. We may have used it only once but I loved it. I found words to look up just to make my diary look more linguistic. I wrote all of my reports using that handy thesaurus. I sent notes to my grandma saying the same thing three different ways using creative wording. Words with hidden meanings and beautiful lettering can make a simple sentence become, well.... poetry.






Here's the thing about Poems.
They come in more forms than:
Little boy blue, 
Come blow your horn,
The sheep are in the meadow,
The cows are in the corn.
~Mother Goose


Or the standard:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning 




Poetry can tell a story. 
The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is a beautiful poem broken into twenty-two chapters. It is a story written in poetic form. It is beautiful and also informative. There is much to be learned about this culture and the territory. You can find it free online here.
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
 Can you see it? I can almost smell the lake water and the pine sap. Gitche Gumee is the great Lake Superior. The gloomy pine trees are most likely the beautiful tall logging pines found in Northern Minnesota. Lovely descriptions. Here are the next lines:
There the wrinkled old Nokomis
Nursed the little Hiawatha,
Rocked him in his linden cradle,
Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
Safely bound with reindeer sinews;
Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
"Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!"
Lulled him into slumber, singing,
"Ewa-yea! my little owlet!
Who is this, that lights the wigwam?
With his great eyes lights the wigwam?
Ewa-yea! my little owlet!"
~Song of Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It tells us a story. 


Poetry can be moving. 
It can set your heart to feel and your mind to think. It does not need to be picked and pulled apart, but instead appreciated as a whole. It can be a catalyst for great conversation and debate. It can be motivating on  a personal level. 

If  ~ Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
There is some good discussion in there, I think.


Poetry was created by our LORD. 
The Psalms are the original organized poetry. All topics are covered. Lessons of morality are showcased. Commands and love notes are sung to us so sweetly. The Psalms are a favorite for many people for their fluid and graceful quality. The lines roll off the tongue fairly easily and pull on our heart strings.
1 May God be gracious to us and bless us
    and make his face to shine upon us, Selah
2 that your way may be known upon earth,
    your saving power among all nations.
3 Let the peoples praise you, O God;
    let all the peoples praise you.
4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
    for you judge the peoples with equity
    and guide the nations upon earth. Selah
5 Let the peoples praise you, O God;
    let all the peoples praise you.
6 The earth has yielded its increase;
    God, our God, has blessed us.
7 May God continue to bless us;
    let all the ends of the earth revere him.
~Psalm 67


Poetry can be a teaching tool. 
My children have thoroughly enjoyed reading Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses and A.A. Milne's Now We Are Six. These are timeless poems written for children. The poems are fanciful and full of childhood dreams and thoughts. The picture above is Sir Bean reading his favorite poem, Forgiven by A.A. Milne. 
Forgiven by A.A. Milne
I found a little beetle; so that Beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.
I put him in a match-box, and I kept him all the day ...
And Nanny let my beetle out -
Yes, Nanny let my beetle out -
She went and let my beetle out -
And Beetle ran away.

She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did,
She said she wanted matches and she just took off the lid,
She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch
An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.

She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind,
As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find,
If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid -
And we'd get another match-box and write BEETLE on the lid.

We went to all the places which a beetle might be near,
And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear,
And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:
"A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"

It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought it must be Me,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought he ought to say:
"I'm very very sorry that I tried to run away."

And Nanny's very sorry too for you-know-what-she-did,
And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid,
So Nan and Me are friends, because it's difficult to catch
An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match. 
There is rhyming, punctuation, phonics practice and comprehension that can take this poem to a whole lesson if you wanted. Or you could just enjoy the wonder of children and read Forgiven for sheer love of the realness of it. 

This is just the tip of the proverbial ice berg. There are numerous types, styles, and kinds of poetry. The idea is to just get reading it. Once there is an appreciation for poetry, a child can be led to write his own. When they are older, the works of Shakespeare or Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales will still be challenging but at least familiarly written. Wonderful works like Beowulf will be more easily read and enjoyed if the groundwork is done now. 

We don't do much other than read and enjoy the poems. There are grand discussions sometimes. Mostly though we sip tea and giggle or shed a tear. We compare to our own lives or compare against what The LORD says in His Word. We appreciate the beauty of the words.



Happy Reading!
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Wednesday, February 6, 2013

*Homeschool~ Shakespeare Study for Kids


Shakespeare for kids? Yes! 

 It is part of our Ambleside Online Year 1 Literature schedule to read several different plays from Shakespeare each Term.  Year 2 has a Literature schedule with different plays. We have been getting quite a bit of Shakespeare in this year!

In the younger years it is suggested that Shakespeare is read from a storybook format of the plays. We are using Tales From Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb. This is our second year reading from Tales and it is wonderful. These are not by any means easy reading and so they are great read-alouds for both the boys. I have been surprised at how how much they retain from these readings. Even in this more simplified version the reading is complex and has a lot of 'meat' to it. We usually take 2 to three days to read it. I take just a bit at a time, and have them narrate back to me orally. 

A well loved copy of Tales From Shakespeare.


Why would we take the time? 
Why bother with Shakespeare? 
Is it even appropriate for reading to children? 

I had all these questions when I started teaching it last year. I had always associated Shakespeare with more of a secular and frankly, a quite bawdy reputation. While I was excited to try reading the plays to them I thought to myself that they would never be able to follow along. The plots are sometimes confusing, evil and good are often mixed up, and sin is prevalent. Not to mention the tragedies are so very heart wrenching, I wondered if it would affect them negatively.



 Surprising to me, they actually like to do Shakespeare readings. Who knew?! They pick up on far more than I ever expected. Sir Bean has especially connected with certain themes. He will often tell me weeks after we have read a play that he was thinking about it. 
Remember when we read about the king who was so angry he didn't talk to his daughter? She just told him the truth! And he got mad at her! Then she had to leave and he got sad but he was too proud to say it. That was wrong. He was wrong.
That was after we read King Lear. We learned that pride goes before the fall (Prv 16:18) and that we all sin and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). We then Netflixed a BBC version of it and both boys were able to tell dad everything that was happening.
Scene from King Lear. (source)

 We have actually had Bible studies spring forth from our Shakespeare study. Shakespeare had a way of making characters much more believable, much more real-life if you will, then most modern day writings. He did not shy away from subjects that are still sometimes taboo in our current world. Good is not always all rosy and pink and bad is often found redeeming itself. I think that is such a positive message to give our kids. In Shakespeare, there are stages of gray in what can seem like a black and white world. What better way to start a conversation on those gray areas than after reading about them?

I strongly encourage any homeschool mom to look into reading a bit from Tales From Shakespeare! It has been a very gentle way of 'getting to know' the works of William Shakespeare.

To supplement the reading I also search out videos from Youtube so we can see the play or at least a child friendly rendition of it. Please do preview them as some subject matter is better left for your teens and you to discuss. I have had good luck with the Youtube channels Shakespeareanimated and VideoSparkNotes. My kids have enjoyed watching these videos more than once.

 I often let them draw pictures of the play while I am reading it. This drawing page might help with inspiration! You can purchase coloring books everywhere online but I haven't found free ones yet. ;)

For notebooking I have used these  and also these free resources.

I also will use LibriVox when I am short on time and need another reader. LibriVox offers thousands of audio books for free. I can put on a reading while we are making supper or doing dishes and then we discuss it just as if I had read it to them.

Their absolute favorite thing about reading Shakespeare has to be the acting out of the plays. I will find them acting out the scenes on their own. Sir Bean and Prince Ray especially like the fighting parts... but I think Princess Petunia prefers to be, of course, The Princess in every play.

What resources have you used for teaching Shakespeare? How do you teach it?

 Always Blessed,
Gretchen :)

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