Homeschool Literature Pro-tip
So I've been at this homeschooling thing for awhile now and since I'm headed through Ambleside Online's Year 1 for the third time, I like to think I'm better at this than when I started. Some days that may be the case, some days maybe no. However, today was a day where some experience really came in handy.
Literature: Read King Lear to Year 1 student from E. Nesbit's Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare.
I love the summaries of Shakespeare's plays in Nesbit's book. The only reason I ever dread them is that there are a lot of characters in each play and even in the summaries it can be difficult to keep track of who is who and what they are doing. I've solved this in different ways in the past, including using Playmobil figures to represent the different characters.
But today, having an instinct that letting people into the playmobil bin would completely end forward momentum on school work, I grabbed a couple of pieces of scratch papers (backs of envelopes actually) and began reading. As each character in the story was introduced, I paused and did a quick sketch to add this person to the line-up characters. These sketches were very rough. In fact they honestly could have been stick figures. But the slow start to reading the story was richly rewarded by a student and parent reader who were very confident of who was who in the story.
By the way, even for the non-homeschoolers, having Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare on hand is so useful if your kids ever get the opportunity to see a Shakespeare play performed. Reading through the summary before the show is a great way to introduce and prepare for the story.
Literature: Read King Lear to Year 1 student from E. Nesbit's Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare.
I love the summaries of Shakespeare's plays in Nesbit's book. The only reason I ever dread them is that there are a lot of characters in each play and even in the summaries it can be difficult to keep track of who is who and what they are doing. I've solved this in different ways in the past, including using Playmobil figures to represent the different characters.
But today, having an instinct that letting people into the playmobil bin would completely end forward momentum on school work, I grabbed a couple of pieces of scratch papers (backs of envelopes actually) and began reading. As each character in the story was introduced, I paused and did a quick sketch to add this person to the line-up characters. These sketches were very rough. In fact they honestly could have been stick figures. But the slow start to reading the story was richly rewarded by a student and parent reader who were very confident of who was who in the story.
By the way, even for the non-homeschoolers, having Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare on hand is so useful if your kids ever get the opportunity to see a Shakespeare play performed. Reading through the summary before the show is a great way to introduce and prepare for the story.