Book Review: How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare

How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig

I had read glowing reviews of this book on other blogs and glanced through the book enough to decide I wanted to try it with the kids next year for our Shakespeare studies. I was thrilled to find the new paperback version available at Blogging for Books and requested it immediately.

Ken Ludwig has written a fantastic book for all parents interested in sharing Shakespeare with their children. These are exactly the methods he used successfully with his own two children, now young adults, though he was not a homeschooling dad. Instead, they delved into Shakespeare in their free time on weekends and in the evenings. Though the strategy is memorization, the true strength of this method is how understanding the meaning of the passages, their context within the plays, and the genius of Shakespeare's language is intertwined with the passages.

...I became convinced that the way into the subject--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.

The books is designed for the parent to read first, then share the passage and information with the children. Links are provided for resources as well, pages to print as memorization aids and recordings of Shakespearean actors reading the passages, for those of us unsure of pronunciation. The author explains every passage so anyone, even someone who feels daunted by reading Shakespeare themselves, can understand the meaning of the selections.

What I love most of all about this book is the example the author has given us of how to share a passion with children. Mr. Ludwig's delight in Shakespeare and his awe of Shakespeare's abilities permeate the text so much that I found myself delighted and awed as well at all the same things. It seems impossible to present Shakespeare in such a way and not foster a love of language in our children.

This is not a course of study. There are not explicit lessons for each week and day of the school year, but I think a homeschooling parent can easily adapt this book for homeschooling. I intend to simply start at the beginning and work our way through the passages. When we've memorized one (myself included!), we'll move on to the next. (My oldest two will be in fifth grade and second grade, but I think the book can be used with children of any ages, though some of the later passages are more appropriate in content for older children.) I anticipate years of enjoyment from the 25 passages in this book (and a bonus 26th and lists in the back of additional passages to explore and memorize). I will probably also introduce some of his recommended books for children every once in a while. At the end of the book, it's not about being able to pass a test on Shakespeare or incorporate quotations into college writing papers, though you might be able to do that; it's about building a foundation of Shakespeare in a child that will foster a desire to learn more for the rest of his or her life.

This book is also a gem for anyone interested in Shakespeare. I never studied any of his plays after high school and have seen very few of them performed. I would hardly know where to start now given the plethora of books and movies and performances. The appendices in this book include annotated lists of books for children, books for teachers and parents, films, and audio recordings. After finishing the book, there was nothing I wanted to do more than start reading, watching, and listening to all of his recommendations.

You can read more about the book here and more about the author here or on his website.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review. The opinions above are my own.

Homeschool Review: Primary Language Lessons

Primary Language Lessons by Emma Serl, updated and reprinted by Hillside Education

This book is recommended by Mater Amabilis in Level 1A for second and third grade. We completed lessons 1 through 82 in second grade and will finish the remaining lessons in third grade. The exercises become more complicated as the book progresses.  In second grade, I spread the lessons out. Usually we had grammar three times a week, but every third week or so we'd have only two lessons. I think we had fewer during Advent as well.

The Hillside edition of this book is a spiral-bound paperback, about 8" by 10". I love the spiral binding because it made it so easy to lay the book open on the table and read together from it or copy from it. In addition, many of the paintings in this edition are in color. The lessons vary between narration, poetry, picture study, conversations, fill-in-the-blanks and discussions about word choices and very basic grammar. An answer key is available on the Hillside website, though I don't think I ever used it.

The grammar lessons in this book are wonderfully simple and conversational. Usually, an exercise that focused on grammar would show a few example sentences and then provide some leading questions to allow the student to discover the element of grammar for him- or herself. Often, it would be followed by a few sentences for additional practice. As the year progresses, there are lessons on the comma, capital letters, initials, and sentences (to name a few).

I also appreciated the word choice lessons. Without expanding on tenses and conjugations, the lessons allow the student to get a sense of whether "is" or "are" should be used, whether "a" or "an," "eat" or "ate" or "eaten." Of course the language to describe the differences should be taught eventually, but it seems to me it will be much easier if the student can already tell what the choice should be. There are also word choice lessons for homophones like "their" and "there."

Many of the lessons are conversations between the student and the teacher, discussing a poem, a painting, a parable or merely something of interest like the student's favorite season. The topic of the conversation is not nearly as important as the process the student employs to organize and deliver their thoughts. In our lessons, I always asked First Son to tell his stories or compositions rather than write them so we could focus on the thought process rather than the physical process of getting his thoughts on paper. (Sometimes I would type them for him.)

Many of the poems are meant to be memorized. Some of them I typed out for our memory binder, but most of them we just read together. In third grade, I'm going to ask First Son to read them aloud. He will be able to practice enunciation and inflection.

We modified this program quite a bit as we went along. It seems to advance quite rapidly in dictation and composition. First Son struggled with these skills in particular and I found Writing with Ease to give us a better structure for learning them. (See my review of Year One of Writing with Ease here.) I also decreased the amount of writing in the program (actual physical handwriting) for First Son in second grade because I didn't want to overwhelm him. It was very simple to change the exercises to oral ones rather than written. As the year progressed, we would complete them orally and then I'd have him write a certain number of them out. I think the physical act of writing is helpful in instilling a feel for the correct use of words in complete sentences and I didn't want him to miss out on that completely.

I really like this book and it's gentle introduction to grammar. We end up touching on grammar in a number of ways in second grade (and next year in third grade) but if I could only keep one, it would be this one.

I did not receive anything in exchange for this review. I purchased the book myself. I do not receive anything if you follow a link to Hillside and make a purchase. You can also find a different edition of Primary Language Lessons on Amazon for a bit less, but I would highly recommend the Hillside one if you have a bit of leeway in your budget.

Quote: The Meaning of Everything

We know these things, but we do not really know why so many people gave so much of their time for so little apparent reward. And this is the abiding and most marvellous mystery of the enormously democratic process that was the Dictionary--that hundreds upon hundreds of people, for motives known and unknown, for reasons both stated and left unsaid, helped to chronicle the immense complexities of the language that was their own, and that they dedicated in many cases--such as the Thompson sisters did--years of labour to a project of which they all, buoyed by some set of unfathomable and optimistic notions, insisted on becoming a part. The Thompson sisters of Liverpool, Reigate, and Bath, living an otherwise blameless and unremarkable (though moneyed) suburban life in three most ordinary English towns, left no greater memorial than the work they performed for the greatest literary enterprise of history. They became footnotes in eight-point Clarendon type in a preface to a volume of that enterprise. That was truly their only reward--and yet in all likelihood they, and scores of others like them, surely wanted no other.

Simon Winchester in The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary