Oh you guys, this book hits on all the fun things for me.  My favorite parts of homeschool.

 

 

It’s called Doodle Lit and it comes in Timberdoodle’s 8th Grade Curriculum Kit or you can buy it solo on their website as well.

It’s a pretty straightforward book that is a fun take on literature.

Lots of classic authors are included – Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte, Herman Melville, Jane Austen and so many more.

For each author there is a cleverly drawn portrait of that author and then a handful of pages for your student to doodle, draw or create in unique and interesting ways.

 

 

I pulled the book from our shelf recently after we read Rome & Juliet together.  (The younger kids all listened to me read the play retold by Edith Nesbit in her wonderful book Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare.  London is reading the actual Shakespearean play herself.)  Although London, my eighth grader, has completed most of the “doodles”, there were plenty that we shared around with the early elementary students in my house too.

Piper and Otto and Berg made masks – like the ones Romeo wore when he first met Juliet, so no one would know his true identity as the enemy family.

 

 

Included in the Shakespeare section were pages instructing students to draw the bouquet of roses Romeo gave to Juliet, design an invitation to a masquerade ball, write a love letter to anyone (even a slice of pizza if you feel so strongly about it), doodle hats on the heads of several various Romeos and more.

 

 

I love its simple, light hearted approach that attracts kids to its pages, but at the same time inserts knowledge and aids in the student’s understanding the author and his/her work a little more clearly.

I plan to use this as a resource whenever one of the kids is reading a particular author’s work.  I like it as another form of creative narration at our house.

I love the artwork and the projects – engaging, funny, entertaining and educational.

 

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