How To Introduce Shakespeare To Little Kids
It’s never too early to start teaching Shakespeare! While you may want to avoid the end of Romeo and Juliet or the many death scenes in Macbeth for little kids, there are still several fun ways to start introducing Shakespeare to your littles.
Buy why Shakespeare? Ken Ludwig, author of How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare gives tons of reasons WHY in his book. My favorite reason, “Being fluent in Shakespeare from an early age imparts one last advantage that has a significance all its own: It gives my children self-confidence. It gives them the tools, as Falstaff might say, to be witty in themselves and be proud of it.” Why is that one my favorite? Well because like him, my own mother taught me Shakespeare at an early age. I recall reciting the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet for show and tell in 1st grade. To this day, I still remember every line. At the time, it made me feel smart and now it makes me smile knowing that I’ve read Shakespeare because of my mother. Whenever Shakespeare is brought up, I think of her first.
Introducing Shakespeare to Little Kids
Ken says in his book “The way to introduce someone to Shakespeare for the first time so that it doesn’t feel daunting and yet has real integrity—is to memorize it. First a few lines,then whole speeches.” After reading that, I honestly called my Mom and said, “Guess what? You were totally teaching Shakespeare right!” Because that’s exactly how she taught me. Line by line until I knew full speeches. Memorizing is the key to Shakespeare and there are two steps to memorizing it: First, say it aloud. Second, repeat it.
Our Favorite Ways To Make Shakespeare Fun
Memorizing might sound boring. Being successful in teaching or learning anything is to keep it fun. Here are some totally fun resources we’ve use to help teach and memorize Shakespeare.
Disclaimer: I received How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare for free and was compensated for my time this post may also include affiliate links. As always, all my opinions are my own. Please read my full disclosure policy.
How to Teach Your Child Shakespeare
First, Ken Ludwig’s book. This is more of a resource for parents but totally worth checking out!
MasterPuppet Theater
Learn Shakespeare’s most memorable scenes by acting them out in a totally fun way! There are 60 charter cards and a 96-page folio of classic scenes—from Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy to Romeo and Juliet’s classic balcony serenade. So you can be sure to find something your littles will LOVE! (By the way, even the littlest of kids love these finger puppets!)
Stop Motion
This is a FREE resource! All you need is a smart phone or iPad and some creativity! It goes along with the same idea of the MasterPuppet Theater but you just use your toys to act out scenes!
Coloring Books
I absolute love this coloring book from Amazon, for a few reasons. Mostly because it has scenes along with the coloring pages so you can learn and memorize different scenes but also, because it’s under $5!
Illustrated Stories From Shakespeare
This is a beautiful book to help your child understand what’s happening in the story. A great way to give context to the scene you are studying, and by doing so also improves your child’s vocabulary. We would study a short scene then read the same scene in this book, then go back and re-read the original scene taking out word by word making sure we understood it. It’s amazing how quickly this helps vocabulary.
Baby Board Books
For the very young, Baby Lit Books has these adorable board books. These would be perfect for a younger sibling while your slightly older one is learning Shakespeare. You know we are all about family learning here! 🙂
The author of How to Teach Your Child Shakespeare, Ken Ludwig is giving away 10 copies of his book! So be sure to enter below! Also, please feel free to follow Ken on Facebook or Twitter @Ken_Ludwig
Good Luck!
