We have a short six-week term ahead of us and are planning to keep ourselves busily ensconced in project work. Our experiment last term was so successful that the children had been begging to start school again last week, with T12 getting quite antsy that he didn't have something to get his teeth into. We…
Category: History – Middle Ages
Medieval Banquet
We did it. After almost twelve weeks of preparation and work, and feeling like we would simply never be ready, the day of the banquet arrived. It went well, really well. The children did their presentations and answered our guest's questions fairly intelligently. The food was remarkably good, considering we used authentic medieval recipes and…
Medieval Banquet Preparation
They say it's all in the prep, and who am I to argue? So we went at it with attitude. Well, at least I did. The children didn't really catch on until the day of the banquet when they miraculously turned into mini Super men and women, whizzing around enthusiastically (well, nearly) doing my every…
A Literary Approach to the Hundred Year War
Otherwise known as the Lazy parent's guide to teaching The Hundred Year War! Yes, I am all warred out. We have covered the Crusades in-depth and T12 has been learning all about the War of the Roses and concurrently we have been learning about the Hundred Year War. Enough already! Stop the fighting! Claire is…
Medieval Fashions: Knight’s Lady
C11 is doing her presentation at the feast on medieval fashions. She had made a fabulous start, creating a hand sewn costume for her medieval peasant doll. It had taken her much longer than anticipated, leaving only three weeks until the date of the feast to have her next costume completed by. This costume was…
Medieval Feast: Meringue Swan Subtleties
For more information about medieval subtleties see here L11 had a few different ideas for subtleties (small favours served between courses). She has already made some marzipan 'War of the Roses' roses subtleties, now it was meringue swans. First she whipped up some egg whites and caster sugar and piped the meringues onto her design…
Medieval Fashions: Peasant Girl Design Board
Right at the beginning of this project I had encouraged C11 to make a design board in order to create a clearer idea of the clothes she wished to make for her dolls. Here is the initial sketch: This helped C11 to visualise and consolidate the ideas in her head. They also gave me a…
Medieval Fashion: Peasant girl
C11 has chosen to study medieval fashions for her project. Her intention was to make clothes for a medieval peasant, lady and princess. However, it has been much harder than she anticipated, and it has taken her almost eight weeks to do the peasant doll. We have decreased her wortk, therefore, to a peasant doll…
Medieval Feast: Invitations
It was essential that the invitations to our medieval banquet were designed, made and sent to their recipients in time for an answer to be given. Therefore, this was one of L11's very first projects to be completed. L11 had already jotted her ideas down for the invitations during one of her project sessions. I encouraged…
The Angelicscalliwag’s Magna Charta
Straight after our democratic meeting, we discussed a few other points and I left the children to make up their own Magna Charta for our home and they wrote it on our white board. I had to giggle at some of the stuff they came up with: The next day, as part of his writing…
Law Study: Hands on Democratic Rule
Having had a highly successful demonstration of what an autocratic rule is, we attempted to replicate the democratic rule. We had already learnt about how the House of Lords and the House of Commons was first formed. I found a couple of clips from YouTube for both, primarily to show the difference between the two,…
Law Study: Hands-on Autocratic Rule!
When I shared with the children what I had planned to help them to understand autocratic rule they were a little excited! In fact they nagged me incessantly because they wanted to do the activity immediately. Everyday they plotted and planned and nagged until I finally gave in and we proceeded with the activity. I'm not sure one…
Leadership Study: King John
I thought King John might be an interesting leader to do a study on because, in general, he is considered a poor leader. We have only ever looked at renowned strong leaders before, so I knew this would be a little different. I wasn't in the mood to study King John, to be honest, so I was…
King John and the Magna Charta: Resources
As you all know, February is my least favourite time of home school, on account of a severe lack of energy. When I saw King John was coming up on the horizon, hibernation for its duration seemed like the only sensible solution. Of course humans don't, as a rule, tend towards hibernation, and I figured…
Medieval Feasts: Subtleties
Subtleties or entremets (old French meaning 'between servings) are works of art using food and story telling and which vary between simple frumenty to more elaborate models of fruit filled castles or allegorical figures from literature. They traditionally marked the end of one course and the beginning of another. Towards the end of the middle ages subtleties…