A Preview of Summer

Summer is not here yet but what we have been up to this past week or so is pretty much a preview of what I envisage our summer to be.

Plenty of Outdoor Playtime

When the sun is out (as it had been most of this week), Tiger spends much of his time in the garden, either playing, or doing some gardening work, or swinging on the rope swing that he made by himself.

If he was not in the garden, he could be found patroling the woods, or playing with other children in the hollow of a giant pine tree or in various playgrounds.

Being Physically Active

This year we see a marked improvement in Tiger's physical strength and stamina.  It gives me a lot of joy to see my boy healthy and strong, especially when he had been relatively weak and poorly up till 18 months ago.

A few of Tiger's regular activities (climbing and tennis) will take a break in the summer but others (table tennis, off-road riding, and swimming) will continue all through the summer.


Plenty of "Food for the Soul"

It is no secret that Tiger and I go to Shakespeare's Globe every summer.  To watch at least three Shakespearean play each year is a tradition that has been well established since Tiger watched Macbeth for the first time when he was six years old.  Since we cannot possibly wait until July/August to visit the place again, we have gone ahead to catch the performance of The Merchant of Venice.  We will watch a few more plays before the season ends.

Another venue that we love to go to is the Royal Opera House.  In a similar fashion to watching Shakespearean plays, Tiger started his annual pilgrimage to the Royal Opera House when he was five, to watch the ballet set to Tales of Beatrix Potter.  Compared to the ballet which always involves a lot of graceful movements, operas may not be the cup of tea for everyone.  Nonetheless, Tiger responded very well to his first opera, La Boheme, when we watched it live a few years ago so this year we are getting more exposure to the operas again.

Don Giovanni seems like a good place to start, with its action-packed plot and Mozart's etheral music.  To be honest, every opera I have watched is so full of passion (both in plot and in singing) that any opera will be able to keep a keen audience captivated, as it did us.  With any luck, we might be back for a few more performances before the end of the year!


Plenty of Food for the Tummy

A consequence of hanging out with his mother who is very fond of eating good (i.e. not necessarily expensive but must be interesting) food, Tiger has a well developed appreciation for different types of food.

As a result, Tiger has been very keen to learn to cook at home.  About two months ago, he volunteered to take over the responsibility for cooking our family dinner every Friday, which was welcomed and supported wholeheartedly by Tortoise and I.  I supervised him in the kitchen for the first two weeks, giving him tips on a few basics of cooking and reminding him of safety rules.  Now, he is able to take on the entire process from start to finish: from writing a shopping list for all the ingredients he needs (photo 1) to buying fresh ingredients (photo 2) to the entire cooking process (photos 3 to 5).

Tiger has gone from strength to strength in cooking over the relatively short period of time from when he first started taking over the responsibility for our Friday night dinners two months.  I must say that I am very impressed with his progress and the variety of dishes he is able to make from scratch, all by himself.  Below is a sample of his ever-expanding culinary repertoire:

The fact that he has even managed to cook rice just right (i.e. neither too soggy nor too dry) is very good going.  Then again, one can argue that Tiger has the advantage of having eaten rice all his life so he knows instinctively what a properly cooked pot of rice should look and taste like.


Informal Learning

While I believe that children learn all the time in their own ways, even when the learning doesn't tick any formal curriculum boxes, I want to make a conscious effort to let both Tiger and I have a proper rest over the summer.  However, just because I have saved some money by not signing Tiger up for summer classes, it doesn't mean that he won't learn things informally, just as he has done recently in a series of basic electronics workshops, which is cleverly disguised as toy-making (or toy-destroying, depending on your point of view) sessions.

In the session, the children did not use any textbook or any formal instruction.  All they needed are their enthusiasm to learn (which is plentiful) and an adult who is willing to show them the ropes.

In Hot Pursuit

Following our recent study of Sherlock Holmes, Tiger and I decide to keep up the interest in all things mystery.

I chanced upon a company that sells various themed mystery/treasure trails around the country.  The trails look quite interesting and challenging, and appears to offer a fun day out, so we tried out the one that is set in Convent Garden area.

Tiger was keen to take the lead for solving the mystery.  The trail is designed such that we are only told the starting point (this particular trail started outside the Leicester Square tube station), and have to find our way around by following the clues given in each step of the trail, which are in turned only revealed when we solve each cryptic code accurately.  We thought it would be very easy, but we realised that we were totally lost after three hours of walking around the side streets and narrow lanes in the Soho/Convent Garden vicinity and finding ourselves barely halfway through our trail.  The guideline on the trail says that it should take 1.5 to 2 hours to complete the trail.  Ooops.

Feeling very hot, bothered, and utterly defeated, we gave up for the day and went home to rethink our strategy for solving the mystery. 

We returned to complete the trail the next day, this time better prepared, both mentally and physically.

There must be something about wearing the Yorkshire flat cap that invoked Tiger's inner detective, as we were much more successful on our second attempt to complete the trail and hence solve the related mystery.  It took Tiger less than an hour to this time, and as we ended up in Convent Garden Market where there are many interesting sights to be seen, we spent the rest of the day congratulating ourselves for being super sleuths and rewarding ourselves with fantastic food found in the market.

Encouraged by our success at the Convent Garden trail, we then spent another fun day solving a second murder mystery, this time at Bankside.  I chose this location thinking that we would have a greater success because it has a shorter completion time of 1.5 hours, and that having been to that area many times we ought to know most of the places there.

Not wanting to take any chances this time, Tiger started studying the trail and working out the most efficient route once we got on the tube to get our first destination.

Our starting point this time is outside the London Bridge tube station, near the Southwark Cathedral.  This proved to be very interesting for me because we had mostly hung out on the St. Paul's Cathedral side of the river, so starting the trail from Southwark is an opportunity for us to explore a few new places.

And exploring and discovering new places we certainly did!  The trail took us through many significant, new-to-us landmarks that we did not know about or had not visited before.  Seeing new places is always exciting, especially when it is done in conjunction with delicious food, as we found when we were led to Borough Market.

It was Tiger's first visit to Borough Market, and the sights and sounds of the market fascinated him.  More importantly, we found a stall that sells Thai desserts and mango sticky rice which we both love to eat!

The trail gradually led us towards the side of the Thames that we are more familiar with, whereupon we walked past the Clink Prison Museum and Tiger wanted to go in to take a look.

I knew about this museum but did not take Tiger here for a visit when we studied Medieval England because I thought: (1) it looked more like a commerical attraction than a real, historical accurate museum, and (2) the content may be too gruesome and hence inappropriate for a young child.  However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only are the exhibits and artefacts historically accurate, the representation of this gruesome aspect of medieval history is not unnecessarily gory.  Tiger was fascinated by the exhibits, while I was slightly appalled by the inhumane use of certain instruments of punishment.

As we approached the end of the trail, we were brought to 'theatre-land' (at least in Tudor/Elizabethan times) and came upon the original site of the Globe Theatre, which was burned to the ground.  Although Tiger and I have visited the current Shakespeare's Globe theatre many times in the past, we have not been to the original site until now.  It is interesting to see that the site is now part of a compound inside a housing estate.  Not far from it stands the Rose Theatre, which was the first purpose-built theatre on Bankside (predating The Globe Theatre) in Tudor time.

We walked the trail at a very leisurely pace, so it took us nearly a whole day to complete it but we stopped and enjoyed our discovery of many previously unknown-to-us places as the clues took us down side streets or made us look closely at certain architectural and historical features along the way.

When There's A Lot of Rain

It has been a very wet two weeks, so looks likely to continue for another week or so.

We have been down with terrible coughs so it has been slow going for the most part, and Tiger's neurological condition has taken a sudden downturn so between figuring out what went wrong to trigger the relapse and getting over our colds, we have managed to get a few things done:

1) Tiger had his birthday party at his grandmother's.

Despite the small-scale nature of the event, it was significant to Tiger in the sense that all the important people he wanted to have at his party (i.e. our extended family in England) were present, and that he is now officially in the double-digit category.  He probably feels rather 'grown-up', being in the double-digit age group, but he has yet to understand that there is a big difference between getting older in years and becoming more mature by way of responsible actions.  He is at the beginning of that journey.


2) A Lego workshop.

Unlike most children we know, Tiger hasn't been overly keen on Lego.  He has been given many different sets of Lego over the years so he is not short of materials to work with, but to my surprise, he hasn't spent hours immersed in it, unlike others boys we know.  Tiger uses his Lego pieces to build his own designs of various structures and aircrafts, but he doesn't like to follow any of the instruction manuals that came with each kit.  I can't decide whether this behaviour is part of his general don't-tell-me-what-to-do approach to life or that it is a show of genuine creativity because some of his own Lego designs are rather good.

As a result of Tiger's tendency to do things his own way, I have not taken him to any of the numerous Lego clubs until this particular structured workshop came up on our radar.  My purpose of taking Tiger to this structured workshop is to give him some exposure to new design and structural ideas that he can take away it to add to his own models at home.

At the 90-minutes workshop, the children were each given a set of pre-arranged Lego pieces and two instruction sheets.  They were to first build a mechanical swing set followed by a mechanised carousel.

 
The most interesting observation for me wasn't that Tiger could actually follow Lego written instructions to completion without help -- I resolved to stand on the side and only helped when asked, but it turned out that Tiger didn't need any help -- but what he did with his time.

90 minutes is about the right length of time for the children to build both structures at a comfortable, unhurried pace.  All the other children at the workshop dutifully constructed the set of swings, then moved on to the carousel.  Tiger took twenty minutes to build his swings set but instead of moving on to the next task like the other children, he spent the next 45 minutes 'playing' with his swings by altering its design, moving various pieces to different places.  While he was engrossed in his play, I was getting slightly anxious, wondering why my son was not keeping pace with everyone else.  After watching him for a while, I went up to him to remind him that there's another model to be built before the workshop was over.  Tiger just said,"I know!  I know what I'm doing."  What can you say to that?  So I retreated back to my corner of the room and prayed silently to myself that I hadn't made the mistake of driving 30 miles (each way) and paying for the workshop for Tiger to make one model....

Tiger did manage to complete the second structure, the mechanised carousel, in the last 15 minutes of the workshop:

3) Shakespeare in the rain

It bucketed down in the morning of the play.  We were having second thoughts about attending it, unsure of whether the play would be cancelled if the rain persisted.  In the end, we decided to brave the weather, mostly because I didn't want the tickets to go to waste, and I thought we would be alright since we had sheltered seats.

The rain didn't let up.  We were drenched from the waist down from the rain that came sideways as we walked over the Millennium Bridge.  Luckily the weather became better so the people in 'the pit' didn't get wet as the play went on.  I brought extra pairs of socks (but not extra pairs of trousers) so Tiger and I sat rather uncomfortably through the play, but we were glad we made it there because Tiger was soon greatly entertained by the production and had more than a few hearty laughs that afternoon.


This post is linked up to:

1. Collage Friday - Learning to set boundaries as a Homeschooling Mom
2. Hip Homeschool Hop - 10/14/14
3. Finishing Strong Week 33
4. Hearts for Home Blog Hop #87
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the Frog Guts

A Few Surprises, Literally

The week started with a creative writing workshop at the British Library.

Tiger and I attended the workshop with much interest.  While Tiger was just generally happy to be out and about and seeing other children, I was curious to see how he fared at a writing activity as we have not done very much formal writing in the past.  I was pleasantly surprised to see Tiger being really engaged throughout the workshop and participating eagerly in the various writing games and exercises, even to the extent of reading aloud his draft towards the end of the session.

The next day Tiger went to the first of a series of creative writing classes held in a homeschooled friend's kitchen.  The class is made up of six homeschooled children, ages 9 to 13, and a tutor who guides them through discussions and techniques.  Tiger says he loves this class for its intimate atmosphere where everyone sat around the small dining table and had plenty of opportunities to discuss their ideas and respond to one anothers' writing.  It also helps that the creative writing tutor is the same man who also teaches Tiger drama at another location, so they are already familiar and comfortable with each other's teaching-learning styles.

The class has obviously been a success, as Tiger came home inspired to write three different drafts followed by two different short stories.  I don't think I've ever seen him write so much and for such a long time at one go.

The good start to the week led to more positive things.  The boy who resisted playing the piano and who hadn't done so for two years suddenly sat and played a few tunes one day.  Seizing the moment, I asked Tiger whether he would like to learn to play new pieces, and he said yes!  So I taught him two more pieces whereby I was amazed at his newfound patience to persevere through the difficult sections to practise over and over again until he mastered them.  Compared to his typical response two years ago whenever we came upon a new, unlearned part ("This is too hard!  I've had enough!"), his sudden willingness to keep trying really took me by surprise.  Needless to say, I am over the moon about this.  I continued to feel really pleased when Tiger practised the new pieces on his own, without needing to be prompted, and couldn't wait to show Tortoise in the evening what he has learned.

Tortoise is of course very happy to see Tiger's renewed interest in playing the piano, so the two of them have been spending some time in the evenings doing improvisations at the piano. 

We also did a bit of maths -- looking at patterns and square numbers.

The irony about having such a seemingly 'great' (i.e. productive) week at the start is that it leaves this mother thinking, "Why can't we be so productive every day?"  Success breeds success, doesn't it?  I was all geared up to give Tiger a tonne of work when I stumbled upon this article that made me say to Tiger, "You know what?  The days are getting shorter and the weather is cooling down.  Wouldn't you rather be in your 'fortress' right now while the sun is out?"

Tiger's "anti-wind, anti-rain, structural fortress".

With that, Tiger spent an entire afternoon and a few more hours afterwards playing in the "fortress" that Tortoise helped him put up at the weekend.  My decision to let Tiger play outside in the middle of what seemed like a terrific week almost certainly disqualifies me to be upheld as the epitome of discipline, I am at peace with it because I am keenly aware that Tiger's childhood is quickly passing by.  I don't recall any of the formal lessons I had as a child but I remember the sights and smells of my childhood playtime.  I doubt very much that Tiger will remember any of the superb maths lessons that I give him or the delightful vocabularly pages that he has to fill in, but hopefully he will have fond memories of hours spent under a big blue sheet of tarpulin on a warm, sunny day.

Still, there are ways to combine fun and learning if one looks hard enough.

At Shakespeare's Globe, again!

This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 9/23/14
2. Finishing Strong #30
3. Collage Friday - Improve Your Homeschool: Know Your Child's Love Language
4. Weekly Wrap-Up: The one with the hair, the clay pots, and the guitar solo
5. Home Education Blog Link Up #17
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal (9/27/14)

Half Way Through Our Summer

How has your summer been?  I hope it has been a very good one.  I know that most of our American friends have started their new academic year.  In Britain, summer holidays last until the end of August or early September, so we are just in the middle of our summer break.

Our summer break has been a good one so far.  We've managed to do all that I said we would do for the summer, so that's great.  This must be the first time we have kept to our summer plan, and I rather like the sense of achievement that comes with ticking off the boxes (in my head) even if that applies to summer activities.  I might try to replicate this stick-to-the-plan approach when we start the new academic year, some time in September, and see how we fare.

Anyhow, here's a quick round up of what we've been up to in the past few weeks:

1.  Classical singing school

This went spectaculary well for us.  During the week-long course, Tiger was exposed to much singing techniques, musical games, and music history.  The repetoire of songs was quite wide -- the children were taught Latin songs, Swahili folk songs, a medieval choral, and a few contemporary (not pop, or anything to be heard on popular radio stations) songs set to poetry.

Before the course started, I wasn't sure how Tiger would respond to it, as he was rather shy about singing out loud and in front of other people.  At the end of the first day, he told me that he enjoyed it very much and he was very receptive to all the games and musical history that were taught to the group.  Although he still won't sing out loud in public, he says he wants to attend future sessions of this course, so at the very least the course has achieved the purpose that I wanted for Tiger, i.e. to be able to enjoy singing as a form of self-expression.  We are not aiming for Tiger to become a choir boy or to aspire toward a singing scholarship.  My goal is very simple: to ensure that Tiger doesn't have any self-inhibitions about singing as a natural human activity.

2.  Photography and 2D animation course

This course was held at one of the leading university's School of Creative Arts.  Tiger was very impressed with the university's professional photography studio (he came home after the photography class and asked whether we could have a similar set up at home) and the animation labs.  In that week, Tiger was taught some cool tricks on Photoshop and Adobe Flash.

3.  Plays at Shakespeare's Globe

This season's plays at the Globe seem to be mostly tragedies or historical plays, which are heavier going compared to previous years' shows.  Titus Andronicus was particularly difficult to watch due to the amount of gore and violence written into the script.  I had to brief Tiger beforehand about a few scenes and put them in context for him.  Even so, I had to censor a few scenes during the play whereby I asked Tiger to cover his ears and look down at his shoes until I told him that it was ok to resume watching.

It is, by far, the most gripping and disturbing play I've watched.  I was on the edge of my seat through most of the play, and had probably forgotten to breathe on several occasions that afternoon.

4.  In the woods

We spent some time in the woods before the weather turned, but not as much as we did in the previous years.  We miss our long walks and adventures in the forest!

5.  Closer to home

While we were not running around outside, Tiger spent his time inventing adventures for himself in the garden, or we would hang out in bookshops to read.  On a few of the short walks we would make time to stop and chat to the friendly animals we met on the way.

One day, Tiger spent an hour in his room making a necklace for me.

There was a lot of banging and knocking sounds coming from his room that morning.  If I didn't know otherwise, I would have thought a blacksmith lived upstairs!

When the noise finally stopped, Tiger presented the necklace to me.  I think it's beautiful, and exceptionally well designed with the twists and turns on the pendant reminding me of Celtic jewellery.

 

I don't know whether Tiger was inspired to make the necklace after learning about the Qixi festival a few weeks ago.  Sometimes it is appropriate to just accept a gift without asking too many questions.  Tiger has always presented me with small handmade items since he was very little, so this might just be another one of his loving gestures.  He is a very affectionate boy -- much like his father -- and this warms my heart more than the summer sun does.


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 8/19/14   
2. Finishing Strong - Homeschooling the Middle & High School Years #25  
3. Virtual Refrigerator Blog Hop 
4. Collage Friday
5. Weekly Wrap Up: The one with all the cell division
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal (8/23/14)

An Arty, Sporty Kind of Summer

My original plan for the summer looked pretty much like this: plenty of summer reading and just chilling out in the sunshine.

Perfect for the summer: the entire Swallows and Amazons series

Yes, that was my plan.  Notice the past tense.

Tiger has other ideas about what he wants to do with his summer.

First of all, he now considers watching Shakespearean plays at Shakespeare's Globe to be his annual, unmissable summer experience. 

 

It has got to be a good thing, hasn't it?  A child who loves Shakespeare's work and who reminds his mother to book tickets to each season's performances when it opens.  Hence, it looks like the two of us will be hanging out by the south bank quite a bit this summer.  Most of the plays this season are tragedies where the characters are much more complex than those of the comedies, so it will be interesting to see what Tiger makes of them.

As if to make up for lost time in the past year due to his ill health, Tiger has also decided to attend a few summer camps:

• sports (football, trampolining, swimming)
• film-making (photography, 2D animation)
• singing

The most surprising part of the above is that Tiger actually agrees to take part in the one-week classical singing camp where the repetoire will include:
1) songs by Bob Chilcott,

2) Ave Verum Corpus by Mozart,

3) Laudate Dominum by Mozart

We shall see how the singing camp works out.  I'm feeling slightly jittery about it because the repetoire is a far cry from the boy's preference of electronic music.  He's either going to see the irony/funny side of my putting him in a classical singing camp (it's my attempt to keep him in the civilised world), or he's going to absolutely despise the stuffiness of certain classical music circles (that can happen when the workshop is run by stiff, old-school types).  I pray for the former.

Our first sunflower this year.  It marks the start of our summer holiday!

Meanwhile, I plan to reread The Well-Trained Mind while sitting on the benches (as you can see from the activities listed above, I shall have many opportunities to do that this summer) as I feel we are being drawn once again back to the Classical Education approach.  I will also be going through all of John Taylor Gatto's articles to see whether I can figure out a way to incorporate his points (he had a classical education) with those of The Well-Trained Mind into our plans for the next academic year.  Specifically, I will be spending time to think through whether I am preparing my son to be a truly educated man.

Please note that I am not suggesting that John Taylor Gatto's definition of what constitutes a true education is to be applied universally to every child.  I just happen to have a lot of respect for the man so I make a point of reading his writing every summer as part of my planning process.


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 7/22/14
2. Weekly Wrap-up: The one where Charlotte returns
3. The Homeschool Mother's Journal (7/26/14)

Looking at the Weird Sisters

This term's drama study ties in well this year's Halloween theme of witches -- the children studied another Shakespearean work, Macbeth.

We first visited the V&A to attend a workshop on Elizabethan England, with an emphasis on the theatre at that time.  During the workshop, the children learned about the development of the Elizabethan theatre as well as become a rowdy audience member (true to the South Bank crowd back then).  They also got to experiment with Shakespearean language, make stage sound effects and dress up as a performer in Elizabethan ruff.  Most relevant to our own study is when the children, with the help of a reenactor, rehearsed and staged the witches' scene (Act 1 Scene 1) from Macbeth.

That was a good introduction to Shakespeare's work in general, but as we knew we were going to study Macbeth in drama class this term, we came home to listen to the entire play and read it to prepare ourselves better.  There is also a BBC animated version of the play, which Tiger did not enjoy as much as he did with a few other plays produced by the same team that he had watched:

Being taught by the same drama teacher, the format of this term's study is very similar to that of the class on The Tempest.  Besides drama skills, the four-day course also covered the following:

• character analysis
• historical context of the play
• scene analysis
• nuances of the Shakespearean language as spoken on stage
• Shakespeare's dramatic techniques in context of how the play is divided into acts

We were extremely lucky to have caught one of the last performances of Macbeth at Shakespeare's Globe this season.

Macbeth, as with all Shakespearean plays, is highly complex in terms of its themes that weave together human nature, history, propaganda, beliefs, and drama.  I studied this play for my O-levels and thought I knew a lot about it back then (since I got an A* for the exam), yet I find myself looking at the play now at a different level from my teenage self, with a deeeper understanding of the complexities of any given situation.  As such, even though Tiger has read the unabridged text and knows the general theme of the story, he is not expected to have the same level of appreciation of the complexity of human nature as a more mature audience would have.  Lessons that come from life experiences cannot be rushed.


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 11/5/2013
2. Entertaining and Educational - Nov 8, 2013
3. Collage Friday: 100 Boxes and a Comedy of Errors
4. Weekly Wrap Up: Dates, Drivers, and Divergent
5. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {November 9, 2013}

The Italian Experience - The Tempest

The Tempest is Shakespeare's final play, making it a mature, complex, and highly symbolic piece of work.  It was also the theme that was used in last year's summer Olympic games opening ceremony.  We have been studying The Tempest as part of our Marco Polo study for its connection to Milan.

The way that we have prepared to study this play is a combination of:

1. watching a film production of the play;
2. reading a simplified version of it;
3. listening to the audio recording of the entire play, and reading the full script. 

As a genre, Shakespeare's work is best learned in the way that it was intended: as a play.  While reading the script is one way to analyse the literary elements of the play, the most memorable and engaging way for children to experience Shakespeare's work is through acting/drama.  If that is not possible, the next best way to learn is to listen to the play, rather than reading it.

It is difficult to find good Shakespearean classes for children so when one of the homeschooling groups that we belong to offer a 4-day course on The Tempest, led by an experienced actor who is also a literature teacher, we jumped at the chance to participate in it.

In Workshop 1, the children started with drama games to help them relax, get acquainted with one another, and to get used to the different drama terms such as 'neutral position' which means to be ready for instruction or action.

This was followed by a brief introduction to the history of drama, in which the drama coach told us that Shakespeare was inspired by the commedia dell'arte characters.  The children were also introduced to the different "levels" in acting, which they learned to convey using different body positions.  Another technique that the children learned was using their facial expressions.  For example, they were challenged to express 'innocence' through their eyes, face, cheeks, mouth, movement, then finally in the ways in which they interacted with the space around them.

The next half of the workshop concentrated on analysing Act 1 Scene 1, which involved a few rounds of discussions about the shipwreck scene.  After that, the children worked in several groups to turn themselves into the ship, and they had to convey the shipwreck using movements.

Workshop 2 again started with drama games that helped to enforce the ideas of relaxation, cooperation and teamwork.  This was followed by a review of Act 1 Scene 1.  This time, the children were led into an analysis of the characters and the scene.  For example, the children were asked to discuss the significance of the play as Shakespeare's final work, the possibility of it being used as an autobiography via the character of Prospero, the use of symbolism, and what Shakespeare's message to the world (through this play) might be.

The focus of Workshop 2 was on Act 1 Scene 2.   Analysis of the scene included discussions about:

• the element of suspense in the order of which the characters spoke
• the effects on the audience to have another character (Miranda) introduce the main character (Prospero)
• how rhythms and patterns in the speech conveyed the status of each character
• the emotions in Miranda's speech - the children were then trained to identify and create the different emotions in speech
• the motive behind having Miranda fall asleep when Ariel was summoned
• the relationship between Ariel and Prospero
• some background/historical inspiration for the character of Caliban - it stemed from Tudor records of "strange-looking" natives near the Falkland Islands

After this, the children worked in groups of four to create the character, Caliban.  They were to show, through working together and body movements, the character emerging out of the earth.

The children worked on Act 2 Scene 2 in Workshop 3, focusing on the characters of Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano.  In groups of five, the children were given the task of creating Caliban with multiple heads and legs under a piece of cloth.  To do this, they had to consider the characteristics of the character -- earthy, heavy movement, type of voice, it being half-animal and half-human, etc.  When they have developed their character, each child was given a line (Caliban's curse of Propsero) to add a voice to the Caliban that they have created.

The scene analysis in workshop 3 included:

• thinking about the mouth movements required for Shakespeare's speech, i.e. the emphasis of vowels
• considering how consonants and vowels work together to affect the sounds of what was spoken
• readings of lines and explaining unfamiliar words
• discussing the interactions between Caliban and the two human characters
• considering the comic potential of the scene - and think about why Shakespeare created the comic element to the story
• understanding Caliban's speech at the end of this scene - what he was trying to do and what it conveyed about him

The final workshop focused on analysing Act 3 and on understanding why Shakespeare has set the play on an island.  Specifically in Act 3 Scene 2, much time was spent on dicussing and analysing Caliban's speech:

• what is his plan?
• what emotions are portrayed in this speech?
• what does he want Stephano and Trinculo to do, and how?
• do the spirits like Caliban?
• what does Caliban need to do before killing Propsero?
• are his words believeable?
• how the use of certain words convey Caliban's state of mind
• what do we learn about Caliban here?
• Caliban's relationships to Prospero and Miranda

The discussions on Caliban led to the children thinking about how the settings of the play might have been related to the slave trade that took place in Elizabethan times, that perhaps Shakespeare intended the audience to consider what would happen if you treat other people as sub-human (as in the case of how Caliban has been treated).

Working in pairs, the children were then given the tasks of:
1) finding an image from the speech to be used to represent a statue of Caliban, and
2) finding a phrase from the speech to represent, as a statue, of either Stephano or Trinculo.

In doing so, the children had to analyse the body language of the statue that they were to represent with their bodies, while also analysing why the two humans may want to help Caliban.  It was interesting to see the many different, creative interpretations of the same speech.

It is all very timely because the new 2013 season has opened at The Globe and we went to watch The Tempest there.  You can catch the final moments of this year's production here.

This post is linked up to:

1. Look What We Did!
2. Hobbies and Handicrafts - May 31
3. Collage Friday - Joy and Loss
4. Weekly Wrap-Up: The First Week of Summer Break 2013
5. Hip Homeschool Hop - 6/4/13