Anglo-Saxon Unit Study: Resources

We used so many great resources for our Anglo-Saxon unit study, I thought I would share them 🙂 Although we did this study a few years ago, we will be repeating it with my younger two so this post will be helpful to me as well. This post will share all my Anglo-Saxon Resources.

Anglo-Saxon Resources: Non Fiction

Anglo Saxons and Vikings from Usbourne is just what you would expect – interesting enough to hold my attention but simple enough for even the youngest to understand. It has wonderful pictures and lots of information without being overwhelming.

Life in Anglo Saxon Britain is the newest addition to our shelves. It documents a child’s life in Anglo Saxon times using primary sources such as paintings, artefacts and quotes to bring this period in history alive. Very recommended!

The Anglo-Saxon Activity Book was very helpful and contained activities which we were able to take a little further. Lots of colouring in, puzzles, and, as I said, opportunities to extend the activities.

Anglo Saxons Village is a book which goes along nicely with the actual village it is based on (in Stowe, East Anglia). This was great to see an actual archeological site and what we can learn from it. A really great book!

Smashing Saxons is a typical Horrible Histories book. Some how I tend to sneer at these books until I open the cover and actually read them. Smashing Saxons is full to the brim with interesting information communicated in such a way to appeal to children of all ages 🙂

Romans and Anglo Saxons in Britain is chock full of hands on activities that will bring this period of history alive for children of all ages

Anglo-Saxon Resources: Literature

For our literature studies we used a picture book of Beowulf to study this classic epic. To supplement, we also used passages from the original poem. This allowed the children to have fun and fully understand the story, as well as learning all sorts of literary devices (such as kennings) using the original version. This picture book by Morpurgo is particularly good with very good illustrations.

We covered the poetry and tales to be found The King and the Green Angelica. This is an out of print book, although a newer addition can be found here. This was handy for my poetry loving younger twin. She devoured this book, time and again 🙂

Beowulf DVD

It was ~~surprisingly~~ hard to find a Beowulf film suitable for children, but this animated version was almost perfect. I say almost because it was still a bit grim in places, but I guess the story of Beowulf is a bit grim so it was probably unavoidable! (Amazon says it is a 15 but I am fairly certain it is a PG).