Product Tips

The Play's the Thing

Volume 1 / Issue 4 / Summer 2001

Few authors have matched William Shakespeare in creativity, insight, and intellect. I have been playing with Shakespearean activities for fourth- through eighth-graders and have chosen two for an in-depth look.

Shakespeare for Kids: His Life and Times, by Colleen Aagesen and Margie Blumberg, is a delightful mixture of biography, history, culture, and creativity. Cleverly structured as a five-act drama, the book details Shakespeare’s life and career against the backdrop of Elizabethan England. Each act places what we know of his life in the political, social, and cultural milieu that inspired his genius. Aagesen and Blumberg provide photographs of landmarks in Stratford and London and reproductions of maps, paintings, and playbills from the era. Sidebars include definitions, literary terms, historical trivia, and famous quotations from the Bard.

The activities address a broad range of interests and abilities. The crafts are as simple as making a quill pen and as complex as designing a coat of arms. Elizabethan recipes and instructions for creating and playing Elizabethan games give children the flavor of Shakespeare’s boyhood. Aagesen and Blumberg also include activities that challenge an array of critical-thinking skills: creating new words, playing with oxymorons, writing sonnets, experimenting with sound effects, and producing scenes from plays. Each activity comes with instructions, a list of supplies, and a detailed explanation of the historical and cultural context. The glossary, list of Shakespeare’s plays, bibliography, and list of credible Shakespeare Web sites provide students with a springboard for special projects and further research.

Aagesen and Blumberg have designed a valuable teaching tool for fourth- through eighth-graders of varying skill and interest levels. Gifted children can use the book independently. I highly recommend it for teachers to use in heterogeneous settings and enrichment classes in these grades.

Treasure Chests Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Age, by Andrew Langley, contains a printing set complete with rubber printing blocks, ink and ink pad, and paper for creating a playbill for Romeo and Juliet; a three-dimensional cardboard model of the Globe Theatre; a colorful time-line poster chronicling Shakespeare’s life and works and the events of the era; a reproduction of a sixteenth-century map of London; a pamphlet briefly summarizing each play; and a booklet detailing the life of Shakespeare and his age. The set is housed in a decorative folding treasure chest with lock and key.

Langley’s booklet contains some of the same information and illustrations as Shakespeare for Kids, but in much less detail, and while the pictures are in color, they are much smaller. The time line, too, is quite small; if actually used as a poster, it would be impossible to read from any distance. The printing set and the model provide engaging, hands-on activities, and the novelty of the lock-and-key chest is appealing, but overall, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Age opens few avenues for expansion and creativity. Any child interested in Shakespeare would enjoy using it, and I would recommend it for a language arts enrichment center, but as a teaching and learning tool, it has limited uses.
—Sarah Boone, M.A.

Sarah Boone has a master's degree in teaching and certification in gifted education. She teaches at Meredith College.