Hello Shakespeare!
 

Why should exposing children to the enjoyment of Shakespeare's work wait until High School or even College? It shouldn't! Although some of the language may not be understandable to young children the ideas, themes and morals of Shakespeare's works are. Children often enjoy the spectacle included in Shakespeare's works and love performing the scenes of spectacle themselves. They also enjoy following the events of the stories and making predictions of what will happen next, especially when they are provided the story in language they can understand like the No Sweat Shakespeare editions. Not only is the dramatic aspect of Shakespeare a delight for children but including Shakespeare with young children allows them to gain a foundation and beginning understanding of Shakespeare that they can draw on in later years. This early introduction will also - hopefully - help eliminate a majority of the frustration and dislike for Shakespeare that occurs when reading Shakespeare in High School and College years because they already have experience to draw on.

 

Performing Shakespeare with young children can help increase their comprehension skills not only for the work being focused on but other stories as well because it helps build the foundational comprehension skills required to be a successful reader. Reading Shakespeare also helps children with the formation of their concept of the past because Shakespeare's works provide concrete evidence of events, thoughts, feelings, and ideas of the past that they can make tangible to help them understand history has been and always will be continuously changing. Shakespeare can be tied to all of the different areas of the curriculum as well. For math you can count the various characters in the play or create sequence cards for the children to reorder. For science you can have the children look at images of various theatres and describe what they see. For Social Studies you can talk about the past, time, and continuity of human life. For Language Arts you are reading the works, generating ideas and making predictions based on the text. For the physical domain you can act out the plays where the children have to work in a space that is shared with others. For creative arts you can have the children draw or paint their own scene or stage.