To Be, Or Not To Be

"That's a very famous line from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Mummy. Can we go and see it?"

Not sure she's quite ready for an audience with the RSC, but Emily's taken to Shakespeare with a passion. She's spent a solid two and a half hours this afternoon listening to a Stories from Shakespeare double tape set, only surfacing once in a while to relay important details of various plots. She's also been devouring various books we have which are children's retellings of some of the plays, and reading a book about Mr Shakespeare's life. Wish someone near here was performing a kiddy friendly version of something, but as far as I can tell, they're certainly not. Not unless you're a school, anyway. We do have dozens of Shakespeare videos (which I swear one day Jon and I may actually find time to watch!) but I'd prefer her to start with something slightly less, um, "wordy", I suppose. I wouldn't want to quash the enthusiasm by baffling her with a full on adult version - with the best will in the world, I think six is a little young for that!

Ironic really, that this fascination has started now. I seriously considered booking a short break in Stratford with theatre tickets included for Jon's 40th birthday at the beginning of June. It would have mirrored the first trip away we ever had when we met. I didn't in the end because I thought Emily wouldn't cope with the play, and there's no way we were going without her. Looks like I may have underestimated her!

This morning we tackled some tricky mental maths stuff, and some work on plurals. I took advantage of Emily's being totally absorbed in her tapes this afternoon, and planned out some stuff for the next few days. I've set up a role play learning type thingy for her, with some scrolls telling her who she is (chief lady in waiting to Liz I) and that the Queen wants to hold a banquet in honour of her returning explorers, and she's left Emily in charge of all the details. There are 13 tasks to be done, ranging from researching food for the banquet and designing a menu to finding out about life on ship so that Queenie can chat intelligently to her fearless heroes over the food. She can pick what order she does them in - I'm hoping she'll go for this, as it combines her love of pretend with lots and lots of arty/crafty/internet research/drawing/making up type stuff. It will cover an awful lot of ground relatively easily. It'll also bring some structure to this project - not that she needs it, but I do!! If she doesn't go for it, well, fair enough, we'll just potter along until I have another, different, bright idea - or she does.

Blackadder videos are going down well here too at the moment. Not necessarily historically accurate (cough) but then again spotting the inaccuracies is very educational, should an LEA person happen to ask. Well, nah, actually they're just really funny, and Emily loves them!

Lest anyone think we're not "doing" science in the middle of all this history malarky - as I type, Emily and Jon are chucking parachutes out of her bedroom window and figuring out which works best and why. There you go. The fact that she's being Princess Elizabeth experimenting with her chief advisor is neither here nor there....