You Fiery-Eyed, frog toed, foot licker!

Well, our study of History has intersected with the life of William Shakespeare. I decided to focus the whole week on him, rather than do a fly-by mention of this great playwright and poet. So, before you are photos of Bubble's lapbook.

A lapbook is a pretty new "it" thing in homeschooling. It is a creative way to study a subject in depth by putting lots of information into small, foldable books to create one keepsake book about your subject. I particularly like to use them as a way to encourage good research and practice our summarizing and main idea writing. Bubbles likes them, most of the time, because the writing is done over many days and them compiled together. So, here is our introductory tribute to Shakespeare.
Bubbles used the outside flaps to list the many "hats" of Shakespeare. On the large, inside square, she wrote a bio summary. Prez colored the bust shot and it made him prouder than a peacock that she decided to use it.
The flapbook on the left is a timeline. Each flap opens up to reveal what special event took place at that time. The scroll on the right gives examples of the many different spellings that the Shakespeare name has been recorded. We discovered this was due in most part to the way people spelled back then--not many spelling rules--spell it how it sounds.

These little matchbooks and flap books were learning about poetry in general and also specifics of Shakespeare's poetry.
This was more poetry and exploring the ways that Shakespeare has influenced the English language. There are some great websites out there with lists upon lists of how many times he used a certain word, how many phrases he coined etc. The insult generator was Bubble's favorite. The one in the subject line is an example of being insulted Shakespearean style.
Here, I decided to expose Bubbles to just one of his many plays. With Saint Valentine's Day being so close, I decided on Romeo and Juliet. I read her the plot of the play, which I found in storybook form(but it used many of the lines from the play) and she drew her favorite scene. Prez's favorite scene was the fight scene, of course, between Tybalt, Mercutio, and Romeo. The envelope book contains her writing assignment that week. She had to create a story that told of our the Capulet and Montague rivalry had begun. The dolls are Elizabethan Era outfits.
The last page was a compilation of fun facts which included Shakespeare's nickname, The Bard, his family's coat-of-arms, his epitaph, various quotes from Romeo and Juliet, and a chart of insults used to generate Shakespearean language insults. All in all it was a lot of work, but well worth the time spent.

I focused heavily on research and writing that week, but did have her memorize a sonnet and a few lines from Romeo and Juliet. For Science I wanted to do something with bacteria since the Plague forced all play houses to close for two years, which led Shakespeare to write and publish poetry. (Plays were not written for literature or published as such and only made money when they were performed. Needing cash, Shakespeare began writing sonnets and having those published). Well, I didn't have any petri dishes and we had enough to do, but hopefully I'll get my act together and set that experiment up later.