🎂 🎭 HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WILL! (Shakespeare, That Is)

It’s Shakespeare’s birthday! Well, more or less.⁽ ¹ ⁾ And that’s good enough for us!

⁽ ¹ ⁾ The thing is, we don’t really know the exact date of Shakespeare’s birth. We do know he was baptized on April 26, 1564, and so was probably born a few days earlier. The 23rd has become the customary date of celebration, and who are we to argue with that happy tradition? 🎂

On this delightful literary anniversary, there’s no better place for you and your homeschool students to explore than Shakespeare’s birthplace itself in Stratford-upon-Avon, now a national historic site in Britain:

• ➢ Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (shakespeare.org.uk)

They even have a special assortment of printable home education materials for a range of different age groups from 4 to 18 — they’re perfect to share with your students this week:

• ➢ Home Learning Materials for Children (shakespeare.org.uk)

If you want to find the full text of all of Shakespeare’s works online, check out the collection available at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, where you’ll also find helpful plot summaries of the major plays (Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and more). And don’t miss the many printable Shakespearean coloring pages available on the Folger’s website!

Here’s a properly reverential reading from Macbeth that you can use to inspire your students this week — I didn’t learn this soliloquy until I was in high school, so this kid’s definitely got the jump on me:

And here’s one of my all-time favorite performances of Henry V that should also prove educationally inspirational:

And if any of your students are aiming for a scholarly career, don’t forget that it’s never too early to start exposing them to an occasional reading of Shakespeare in the original language:

So, happy birthday, Will! (More or less!) You’ll be pleased to know we’re still celebrating you more than 450 years on! 🎭

What delightful dramas and splendid speeches have you and your students laughed and cried over in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: Your River Houses history encyclopedia has a beautifully illustrated overview of the Elizabethan period, within which Shakespeare lived and worked, on pages 260–261. It’s just the background you need to do a wonderful homeschool history-and-literature lesson. 📖

❡ Dukedoms large enough: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize, and there’s no better homeschool field trip than a field trip to a new library! The WorldCat Library Finder will help you find all the library collections near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 🏛️

❡ Here, said the year: This is one of our regular posts about Homeschool Holidays & History. Add your name to our weekly River Houses mailing list to get more great homeschool history lessons delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 📫

❡ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today! 🗓

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❡ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groups — local chapters that we call “Houses.” Our first at-large chapter, Headwaters House, is now forming and is open to homeschoolers everywhere. Find out how to become one of our founding members on the Headwaters House membership page. 🏡