Ways to Make Shakespeare Fun
Make puppets or use stuffed animals to act out scenes from the play.
Have your child draw pictures of the characters or scenes as you read a play.
Make the Globe Theater out of cardboard boxes for your child to use for plays.
Make a theater out of Legos or blocks.
Get costumes that reflect the time period and let your child dress up.
Have an Elizabethan dinner where the whole family dresses up in clothes that represent the
time period and eats food of that time period.
Use the Shakespeare stories as bedtime stories.
Project: Create Your Own Play
The heart of education is for a child to reproduce or show what they learned. Allow your child to create her own play using puppets, stuffed animals, or doll house figures. Let your child be the director and producer of her own play. Assist in creating any costumes, backgrounds, theater sets or any reasonable detail your child envisions. Encourage your child to practice her play a few times. Then allow her to present it to the rest of the family. If you have other children then get all of them involved for more fun and learning.
Resources for a Shakespearean Lesson
Books
Tales from Shakespeare, by Charles and Mary Lamb
Tales from Shakespeare, by Marcia Williams
The Children’s Shakespeare, by E. Nesbit
Starting with Shakespeare: Successfully Shakespeare to Children, by Todd Daubert and Pauline Nelson
William Shakespeare by Ibi Lepscky (May be difficult to get.)
Shakespeare’s Storybook (Barefoot Books)
Shakespeare for Kids: His Life and Times, 21 Activities
Shakespeare’s Globe: An Interactive Pop-up Book, by Toby Forward