Update! I keep finding more resources to teach Shakespeare, so I’ll just add them here so you don’t have to scroll! Core Classics has a teacher’s guide and activities for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that have vocabulary and more about Shakespeare’s other works.
I can hear the eye rolls already. But you can teach Shakespeare to kids easily with a little help from some trusted homeschool resources who have done a lot of work to bring the bard to your babies.
My babies are tweens, and enjoying playing their part upon the world’s stage with heavy sighs and a newfound skill of expressing subtle boredom about everything, even when they love it. Personally, I love Shakespeare. I found his use of words and cadence thrilling. But, imbuing that thrill of a tale that would not offend to my twins intimidated me.
The more I went over what I hoped to teach them, the more I knew they would like it. Shakespeare has codes, and bad words (we spent an hour on the origin of ass and how it became a bad word), high drama and word play. I alone spouting lines could not get them to see all that.
So, I did a little exploring to help me help them find the beauty in the bard’s written words. These worked well for me. There are resources from Pre-K to High School.
How to Teach Your Children Shaksepeare
My go to was this book. The author is a two-time Olivier Award-winning playwright and he breaks down “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” where kids can understand all that is going on behind the scenes. It’s playful and easy to follow. More importantly, it got the twins interested in what was next in the fairy world as well as the drama among the teens.
He breaks down “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” where kids can understand all that is going on behind the scenes. It’s playful and easy to follow. More importantly, it got the twins interested in what was next in the fairy world as well as the drama among the teens.
I read it with the kids, leaving out the bits where the author talks to the parents about how to teach kids. He has a good memorization method where you repeat the complicated lines in small chunks. You break it down further to talk about what those few words mean, from the flowers that line a bank to the swash of poison in the eyes.
Midsummer Night’s Dream Book Club
We love a good book club, and I like a course that includes everything. This one from Literary Adventures for Kids is an online literary guide that has everything you need to study A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It includes vocabulary, free-write questions, rabbit trails, and a few project ideas. It is perfect for a month of high school-level literature.
Who Was Shakespeare? Study Unit
This is one of our favorite resources in The Cafe. If I get stuck on a subject and need more ways to understand a subject, Randi at Peanut Butter Fish Lessons comes through. Her Shakespeare study unit delves into how he made affected theater, the English language and current films and TV plots.
This can be tailored to kids as young as early elementary or middle school. It follows along with books about Shakespeare you can pick up at the library or buy affordably online.
The 40-page unit study teaches him about his plays, a bit of English history that may have shaped Shakespeare’s writing, a timeline of events for the playwright’s lifespan, biographical info and much more. You don’t have to get the books and just research info online.
Randi always includes other resources for kids who find different parts of the study unit interesting, from biography to word originations.
Teaching Shakespeare by the Folger Institute
The Folger Shakespeare Library offers a ton of online resources and tools to help in your research to teach Shakespeare and the early modern period.
The Shakespeare Documented is stuffed with actual records, including family, legal and property records, plays and much more.
Hamnet, named after Shakespeare’s only son who died young, holds all the bibliographic info and Miranda Miranda holds images to audio, datasets, videos, and thousands more.
This has a wide range of online interactive resources that is great for primary school pupils to watch, read, make and play. Kids can connect with Shakespeare’s plays, themes and vivid characters.
Animations help kids learn about Shakespeare’s most famous plays. Backstage videos and fun facts and activitites help kids dive deeper into the world of Shakespeare.
This is chock full of resources that will help you in your homeschool. But! The most important part of this site is the Shakespeare Insult-O-Matic. Get ready for the giggles, kids, too(!) as the bard whips out whoppers such as Where wilt thou find a cavern deep enough to mask thy monstrous visage? (Julius Ceasar, ACt 2, Scene 1).
The bard’s barrage of words are broken down to show how his words blasted the receiver and had the audience in stitches. Like this: “Visage is a posh word for face, taken from French. Shakespeare’s suggesting that the insulted person’s face is so horrible, in this case because of their crimes, that finding somewhere far enough away to hide it will be very difficult.”
