Yes, dear reader (family & friends), I am thinking of you on our vacation and I will be posting again soon. But this vacation I have sworn off blog work. I’m off to play at Grandma Ruth’s today with family heirlooms and photos and memories.
Author: Angela
I write so my family will always have letters from home.
Shakespeare Week II
I felt alive today, truly happy teaching my kids and their friends and helping them discover and create and keep trying, even when it’s hard. I was born to teach and love kids. Today was the second meeting of the Sonoran Shakespeare Players and we worked on three big projects on three big tables in our house.
Station 1: Try writing with a quill pen and create an illuminated manuscript letter.
She loved it.
So did she.
This little boy will have done it all by the time he begins school. I love the “…and why not?” look on his face.
Station 2: Using an oatmeal container, popsicle sticks and tooth picks, construct a Globe Theater.
Paige and Emma re-created the balconies, stage, partial roof and entry with the Latin phrase meaning, “All the World’s a Playhouse” and drew Hercules carrying a globe on his shoulders.
Station 3: “Translate” and rewrite a speech from Hamlet from one of your favorite characters. Then draw your favorite scene.
This one took the most brain power and time. Wow, the kids did a great job, once they realized they didn’t have to understand every word, just the main ideas.
For our next meeting, we’ll have our two missing Players back from vacation and we’ll be able to finish reading the play aloud. The costumes are accumulating; we’re focused and oh, so dramatic.
It’s a Right-Brainer
This is a word, a little worse for wear after hanging for an hour. It was the theme from our Cub Scout Pack Meeting tonight. Daniel earned a silver arrow point, the ultimate frisbee belt loop and baseball belt loop.
Tomorrow I’ll listen better
Mark has been grumpy all day. And I have been typing, sewing, shopping, and cleaning instead of walking with him, holding him and easing his troubled heart most of the day. Tonight was better as we snuggled together to read bedtime stories. Tomorrow I’ll respond more promptly to his needs. Duh. It took me all day to figure that his grumpiness and my busy-ness had a correlation.
“Fathers and mothers are too absorbed in business and housekeeping to study their children and cherish that sweet and natural confidence which is a child’s surest safeguard and parent’s subtlest power… Happy are the boys and girls who tell all things freely to Father or Mother, sure of pity, help, and pardon; and thrice happy the parents who, out of their own experience, and by their own virtues, can teach and uplift the souls for which they are responsible.”
-Louisa May Alcott, Eight Cousins
Family History
No time to post much. I’m finishing up some work for Grandma Ruth’s personal history and making some new quilt squares for her family quilt. I’ll see her in August and I want to surprise her.
Man, I’m excited.
Oh, and another thing:
I just noticed that this is the 100th post on our blog. Do you have a favorite post? e-mail me if you want and tell me. I think my favorite posts are Girls Camp Eve, Book Ends and Spring Lake Ramblings. Girls Camp Eve I made private after my blog got pounded with hits looking for nifty Girls Camp ideas, which is NOT what that post was about. Although we have kept our blog public, we know it’s my family who reads it, and the occasional accidental tourist. I’ve lived away from family so long that it feels good to think that you are getting to know me a little better through this blog; many of you, for the first time.
Fiddlin’, with a Bonnet
Here’s the only picture we have of me fiddlin’ at the ward Pioneer Day celebration. My Richard called the dance on very late notice, once again proving he IS my knight in shining armor. I was the only one with a bonnet, which really is too bad because dressing up is so good for you. I played Turkey in the Straw over and over and we watched a big old Virginia Reel come to life, little legs running and little bodies twirling… I say “little” because it was mostly children who dared have this much fun.
…But I’m sure the old pioneers would have smiled to see the children thinking of them and having such a good time.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2rV0ey6Op0
My private celebration of Pioneer Day brought deep feelings as I played violin by myself, enjoying my own arrangement of Come Come Ye Saints and letting the tears flow. Thank you, ancestors, for what you did for your family and for the gospel’s sake. Thank you, Dad, for being our modern day pioneer and being the first to accept the gospel in your family.
Sonoran Shakespeare Players
Sahuarita’s newest Shakespearean troupe is composed of children, ages 3-12. They have named themselves,
The Sonoran Shakespeare Players
Gideon, Tristan, Alfred, Virginia, Paige, Daniel, Timothy, Mark, Emma, Benjamin, & Hannah
I don’t have a lot of pictures because I was busy helping the kids read and act.
The Ghost of King Hamlet appeared, via an overhead projector and transparency drawn by Daniel.
We decided to bring the ghost back over and over again. Great fun.
It was a day full of surprises. The excitement for the play was bigger than I thought. The reading and expression of the kids was more animated than I expected. Their understanding of the plot, characters, and themes was great. We didn’t make it through the whole play in a single reading; we’ll finish over the next few weeks. We also created a timeline of Shakespeare’s life, played a sequence game using events from the play, and ate pop rocks. I was supremely entertained.
Family Tree
Richard comes home from work most evenings and looks immediately out the back window and makes a comment about the state of our crape myrtle tree.
This little tree has weeks when the blossoms wane and it looks more like a spent dandelion that has lost its fuzz. That little trunk and my thumb share the same diameter. But despite its small size, this tree can blossom like there’s a party going on. And for some reason, Richard follows the ebb and flow of our tree with great interest.
I think it has a lot to do with the investment of time he puts into our back yard. After checking the tree each evening, he takes a walk out to the tomato plants, surveys the strawberry patch, adjusts sprinklers, and takes an inventory of his kingdom.
Are you ready for my simile or metaphor? Faithful readers, surely you were expecting it.
And so it goes. Some weeks our family seems to be in sync with our moods and schedules and we’re in full bloom. Other weeks, we are stretched to the limit by our outside commitments and we feel like spent dandelions.
We’ve had a spent dandelion week. Even trying to pace ourselves, the stress of life has crept in a little and I am ready for a weekend break. We look forward to a week of full-bloom soon… despite missing out on a Stewart reunion at the Weber.
The Play’s the Thing (Hamlet, 2.2)
Ghost of King Hamlet?
This week we’ll start our reading of Hamlet For Kids with lots of friends in our house and probably a lot of sword play. The tricky thing about organizing this has been to narrow down the activities I want to do.
Should we build a Globe Theater? Make a timeline of plays and compare it to the timeline of Shakespeare’s life? Should we make illuminated manuscript letters? Or just try to write with quill pens? How important is it to learn to write in iambic pentameter? And then there are the roles to cast. Oh, I hope we don’t have an I-wanna-be-Hamlet-fight. (I promise we’ll take turns!)
Through all the wading through ideas, the best and most simple idea remains:
Read the play aloud. Let the kids learn to read with expression and add action and a few props. In other words, you are right, Mr. William Shakespeare,
“The Play’s the Thing.” (Hamlet 2.2)
I can’t wait until the grave scene.
Back Yard Boys
I feel some real satisfaction when I see my boys playing with army men outside in the dirt instead of watching t.v. or playing computer games. 15 minutes of computer time a day gives them plenty of outside play time.
Richard is finishing up our rain gutters. And just in time for all the monsoon rain.
Mark can do a somersault. Doesn’t it seem like it should be spelled “summer salt?”
Since we put the trampoline in the ground, it gets a lot more traffic. All the boys love it.
Paige took these photos. I was tied to the stove, but it was nice to be able to say, “Hey, those boys are looking cute out there. Can you go take some photos?” and know that she would do a good job.