School-Age: Shakespeare

Although it is not a topic covered in public school until high school, we have SO many nonfiction (and even fiction!) books about William Shakespeare. He's kind of a big deal so I wanted to do a program about him!

1. Reading
We read "To Sleep, Perchance to Dream: A Child's Book of Rhymes". It contains a few lines or a couple short passages of Shakespeare's works and is illustrated by James Mayhew.

It gave them a perfect introduction to how Shakespeare wrote without overwhelming them with too much.


2. Discussion
We talked about who this Shakespeare guy really was. I shared some tidbits of information about how many plays he wrote, where he grew up, and when he lived. 


3. Activity
I based my activity off of a book that contained phrases or words that we use today because of William Shakespeare. The book is called "Will's Words: How William Shakespeare Changed the Way You Talk" by Jane Sutcliffe.

I had NO idea how many phrases I use on a daily basis are because of Shakespeare's works!

I made some flashcards of the phrases from the book. I shared the word or phrase with them and asked the kids to tell me what it means. Then I shared the information from the book about what play it came from or how it was used.


4. Craft
I decided a simple craft for this week would be to write with quill and ink! I found a bag of quills and a set of fountain pen ink on Amazon. I explained to the kids that Shakespeare had to write with a quill and ink for all of his plays. Imagine having to dip your pen for ink every few moments!

To make it simpler for all the kids to share the ink, I had my husband and coworkers save plastic bottle caps. They were the PERFECT vehicle to put a small amount of ink in without getting too messy.

Notes:
Our area was dumped on with snow a couple days ago so my end of the week program was not as well attended as I had hoped - I have a lot of left-over supplies! These are the woes of planning for library programs. Besides that, it was still a successful and fun program!