Teaching Shakespeare to Kids

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Did you know Shakespeare’s birthday is April 23rd?  We really enjoy learning about Shakespeare in our house. My 8 and 11-year-olds know many of his stories very well and love reading his works. Now, I know that Shakespeare seems so daunting and unapproachable, but I want to share with you some tips for teaching Shakespeare to kids. I used to fear teaching Shakespeare, but not any longer. Shakespeare does not have to be scary!!  (I have been  compensated for my time writing this post, but all thoughts and ideas are my own.) 

We have been using a new book this year that we just love called How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig. While we have been reading different Shakespeare books for a while, this one has been a fun new experience for us.  It’s focus is on helping kids memorize passages as well as understand more about the plays and the history at the time. It is a book for parents to use in teaching Shakespeare to their kids.

How to Teach Shakespeare to Kids:

To teach young kids Shakespeare, I recommend getting a simplified book of Shakespeare stories. A few we love are the Usborne Illustrated Stories from Shakespeare  and Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb We also really enjoy the Shakespeare Can Be Fun series by Lois Burdett.

Then the next step is to memorize passages from the original works and to learn the history of the plays.  This is where the book How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare comes into play. In Ludwig’s book, he teaches you how to begin memorization of Shakespeare’s passages and give a whole bunch of passages to use to begin with.

Ludwig explains the reasoning for learning Shakespeare as well as why memorizing it is so important.  What I love so much about his book is that he really makes memorizing Shakespeare easy and approachable. He takes all of the work (and the fear) out of it and makes it easy to just step right in and do it!

I made a set of Printable Shakespeare Memory Cards. These include 12 passages. Some are from Ludwig’s book as well as a few others that I love.

Grab this printable in my shop– or add it to your cart now!

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