Saturday, April 23, 2016

Celebrating 400 Years of Shakespeare

We celebrated Shakespeare's birthday/death day today! We had an easy dinner (hummus & veggies, chips & salsa, cheese & crackers) and black bean brownies (thanks, Rose!!).  

Yesterday for our freewriting time the children and I wrote/drew on our favorite characters from "Midsummer Night's Dream."  Finn wrote about Demetrius, Annie wrote about Queen Titania, and I wrote about Puck.  So before dinner tonight we each dressed up as our chosen character.  I literally threw together our costumes without any forethought, right before dinner.  It was fun! Here's part of my Puck interpretation....


After dinner I read to everyone from Bruce Coville's retelling, and assigned parts to the other people with us--Mr. Polly was Lysander, my sister was Hermia, my father was suitably cast as Nick Bottom. The acting out was hilarious.  Then we used the insult generator to learn some excellent Shakespearean insults. Finally, Finn and I recited Puck's monologue from the end of the play together. 

The best part of this was that my children were thrilled at the fact that I was dressing up with them and participating as well.  They loved the leaves in my hair, my green glitter (you really can't see much of it here), my leggings and sarong (made in two seconds by wrapping a yard of lightweight forest green jersey around my waist!).  Their happiness was priceless.  

Happy birthday to the Bard of Avon!

3 comments:

  1. Good show old chaps! I hope the brownies turned out well. We've just seen some footage on the news from the British celebrations.

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    1. They were GREAT!! Mr. Polly is vegan (and actually avoiding desserts too) but he "indulged" in two last night...I think he earned them after a 19-mile run in the mountains. We had another tonight for dessert and they're just as good the next day...so chocolatey. I like mine with a dollop of Greek yogurt!

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  2. So fun! I bet they'll remember it decades from now :)

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