My Sons’ Goofy Comments About Shakespeare

August 30th, 2012

goofy-comments-shakespeare

Here are some goofy comments about Shakespeare my sons made to me recently:

“Mom?! How come you’re going so slowly? I can’t stand it! How on earth am I supposed to follow the action in the story if you take so long explaining one scene?” cried out my 10-year-old son Stephen.

“Sweetheart,” I answered, “you’ve already heard the plot of the story, and you’ve seen the play. Now we are going to read the actual Sharespearean language. I want you to understand the poetry of it, to savor the language. We are going to settle in and study one or two scenes per day. It will take a month for us to study this play. By the end of the year, after studying many plays, you will be able to understand any Shakespeare play that you’ve never read before just by reading the real thing.”

My 12-year-old son Bryan stated another observation about Shakespeare. “Mom, how come there are so many words in each scene? It seems like the characters could have said their lines in a much more simple and understandable way. Even in the play we saw, the action didn’t move forward very fast.”

“That’s because the language is poetic. It’s beautiful language, and your future wife is going to thank me for teaching you how to understand poetic language.”

My son Nathaniel asked, “Is that how Dad got you to marry him?”

“No,” I said, and we all laughed.

Related product: Romeo and Juliet Unit Study

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Shakespeare in the Park

August 29th, 2012

Shakespeare-in-the-park

Last weekend we took our kids to see Shakespeare in the Park. This is an ideal way to introduce Shakespeare to children, because it is a casual environment that doesn’t require complete silence. Besides, kids can wiggle around on a blanket on the grass, changing positions, so even if your child has lots of energy, the child does not have to sit still. Shakespeare in the Park is usually free, so if you need to leave, you are not wasting any money.

On the way to the park, I told my children the plot of the story “Twelfth Night,” which was being performed that night. Twins are shipwrecked, and the girl thinks her twin brother has died. So she goes to work for the local duke. She dresses up as a boy in order to work for the duke, but she ends up falling in love with the duke. Meanwhile, the duke is in love with Olivia, who is in love with the duke’s page (who happens to be the girl dressed up as a boy). Suddenly the twin brother shows up and is mistaken for the sister who is dressed up as a boy. In the end, everyone is paired off and gets married. Yes, I told my kids that in Shakespeare’s comedies, there is always at least one love story, and couples always get married at the end. This is opposed to the tragedies, where lots of people are dead at the end. Yep. Comedy or tragedy. Married or dead. My kids laughed.

My kids seemed to follow their first Shakespeare play just fine. I told them they might not understand all the language, and just to pay attention to the plot. Also, I said that the language was similar to the King James version of the Bible. My 12-year-old son had no problem understanding the language, my two middle boys understood most of it, and my 7-year-old daughter said she couldn’t understand the words, but she enjoyed seeing the play. What a great kick-off to a full year of teaching Shakespeare to my children!

Related product: Romeo and Juliet Unit Study

Linked to Introducing Your Children to Shakespeare

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Glow-in-the-Dark Chalk

August 27th, 2012

glow-in-the-dark-chalk

For my daughter’s birthday, she received a kit of glow-in-the-dark chalk. It was super easy to make. All you had to do was shake the glow powder and chalk powder in a small container, add a small amount of water, and pour it into a mold. The box said that the chalk would harden in half an hour, but it was not hard whatsoever within that time frame. It was more like an hour, and even then, the chalk was sort of soft and had to be handled carefully to not crumble in your hands.

But it worked. The chalk (especially the yellow and green) glowed in the dark as my children drew pictures all over the driveway one night. It was super fun. The red and blue glowed a little bit, not nearly as much as the yellow and green. This is definitely an activity worth doing with your children, since my kids kept squealing with joy as we were adding more and more details to our glow-in-the-dark chalk masterpieces.

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Re-organize Your Office

August 24th, 2012

re-organize-your-office

A fun way to re-organize your office is to empty the room completely and give it a fresh coat of paint. Then put everything back into your office exactly where it belongs. Suddenly your office is more organized than it’s ever been, and it has a new, fresh look.

That is exactly what my husband and I did one Saturday afternoon this summer. It was completely unexpected, but my husband wanted to change the light fixture in the office because of poor lighting. I said, “Shouldn’t we repaint the ceiling before changing the shape of the light fixture? Otherwise it will be harder to paint later.” You see, the ceiling was blue, a bold blue that used to match the nursery decor back when this room was a nursery. Now for five years it has been an office, an ugly blue office that we had always planned on painting but never had the time.

My husband answered, “I guess you’re right. Do you want to help me paint the office?”

“Sure,” I said, and off he went to buy the paint. While he was gone, the children and I emptied the room, except for the furniture. Those my husband scooted into the center of the room, covering them with a drop cloth. I started putting blue painter’s tape around the window frame and door frame. When my husband got home, we started painting.

By the time we went to bed that night, the office looked completely different. I found a stack of un-filed papers three feet tall. Our file was completely full, so this is why it was impossible to file our paid bills. My husband and I started shredding older papers that weren’t needed. Then we decided that burning the papers would be better than shredding them, so we threw bills from as far back as the 1980’s into the fireplace. It felt fresh and clean to be caught up on our filing. All the necessary paperwork was filed properly, and it barely fit. There were no stray papers in the entire office.

The next day we put all the office stuff back into the office. Many items belonged in the garage or other rooms in the house, not in the office. When we were finished, the office had less in it than ever before, and we knew where every single item was located. I have smiled every time I’ve gone into the office ever since.

For more ideas on organizing your home, watch Organizing for a Fun Homeschool.

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