Making School Spooky

     One of the things I enjoy about homeschooling Miss C is finding ways to make learning fun -- or if not more fun, more palatable, or more entertaining, or more interesting.  For Miss C, some audio-visual supplement can make a difference.  So as she's heading into a new subject, I poke around to see what I can find.

    In a few weeks, she'll be reading some Edgar Allen Poe poems and stories. And oh, what fun stuff I've found!

You can watch a free, full 45-minute biography called "The Mystery of Edgar Allen Poe" from the Discovery Channel, here.

You can watch Vincent Price enact and recite Poe stories in "An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe", here.
(And not direct Poe material, but about him and very entertaining: a Tim Burton short animated video, called "Vincent" about a little boy who wants to be Vincent Price -- with lots of Poe references.)

Remember "The Raven?"  You can hear the rather creepy Christopher Walken read it here.   And then you can compare his version with a reading by James Earl Jones, here.  And another by John Astin (Gomez!), here. 

There's a charmingly scary animated video version of The Tell-tale Heart, here.

And an animated reading of Annabel Lee, here.

There's a rap video of the Pit and the Pendulum here.

You can hear Basil Rathbone read the poem "Alone" here.

There's an amusing short animated video of Edgar Allan Poe auditioning to host a tv show called Tales of Mystery.

Goodness, we WILL be ready for Halloween!