Hands-On Homeschool Percentage Maths {Domesday Book}

In our quest to do some hands-on homeschool percentage maths, I turned to an unlikely resource, the Domesday Book. The Domesday Book is a record of The Great Survey of much of England and some of Wales. This was carried out by William the Conqueror in 1086, twenty years after the Battle of Hastings in 1066

Take a look at our Domesday Book learning we did, with great book recommendations and map work, finishing with a fun hands on activity: making our own Domesday Book. This is a fantastic activity to display at your child’s end of unit presentation!

Keeping Homeschool Percentage Maths Hands-On

You all know how much I like to utilise hands-on learning whenever I can. On this day, we used our handy-dandy papier-mache map. This is one of the best investments in time we have made!

Learn how to make these super easy and very inexpensive paper mache maps for your own history unit studies and then learn how to use it to create an aged map with co-ordinates for fun map activities or for the purposes of a treasure hunt.

The children built up our very own Manor, complete with a Keep:

I showed them what an average Manor in 1086 consisted of by I drawing a pie diagram. A pie diagram looks like, well, a pie which is divided into slices. In this case, our pie chart showed how land was divided up on a manor in 1086:

Demonstrating that One Whole Pie Equals 100 Percent

The visual nature of hands-on homeschool percentage maths makes it easy to demonstrate simple principles. This was the girls first introduction to percentages. I asked them to add up all the percentages of the different types of land. They found it came to 100% I explained that 100% was all the land included in the Manor, or alternatively, it was the whole manor. Having built this particular manor, they were easily able to visualise this.

Next, I asked them to figure out a way to show the different types of land (pasture, arable, woodland and settlements). I wanted to be able to show the different divisions in land using different coloured card. The girls struggled with this but Thomas knew immediately to use a different colour for each type. I had them decide on a key and wrote it on our board:

Using Coloured Card to Visually Represent Proportions of Land

Charlotte suggested we use each piece of card to represent 1%. I asked her how many pieces in total she would need. When she realised it would be 100, she giggled, saying we didn’t have enough room on the map! Lillie suggested each piece of card represent 10% of land. I want to encourage any participation from Lillie as she finds maths so hard. I told her that was a great idea and asked how she would represent 25% and 35%. To which she promptly replied ‘cut a card in half!’ Nothing wrong with that mathematically!

Thomas suggested each card represented 5%. He easily calculated that we could then show 25% and 35% without touching the cards. He also worked out we would need 20 cards, which would fit on the map without a problem. We labeled them and I had the girls place them on the map in the proportions required, according to the proportions garnered from the original Domesday Book:

Using Chocolate Brownie Analogy

I then told them that their manor was 2 hides. The children immediately asked what a hide was. Each hide is the equivalent to 120 acres. Lillie worked out how many acres the manor had in total (240). I asked how much would be meadow land. At this point, weary from calculating, Lillie gave up the will to live! Thomas knew how to work it out mathematically, Charlotte had some sensible but ultimately wrong ideas. I could see Lillie glazing over, so I changed what the cards represented. I moved them all together in a rectangle and told her to pretend they were a tray of chocolate brownies. Well, I’ve never seen a girl perk up quite so quickly! I wrote on the board exactly what I needed her to calculate, which she managed VERY easily. I think brownies are her kind of language!

Using Simple Maths to Demonstrate Harder Maths

I am finding that if I want the children to learn harder maths, first I need to show them the principle using smaller numbers. This makes the maths easier to understand, allowing them to then apply their knowledge to larger numbers:

Applying Brownie Maths to the Manor’s Acreage

Once I knew all three children had understood, I encouraged them to think in acres (as per original investigation). They worked out that each card was the equivalent to 12 acres. Using this knowledge, they were able to work out how many acres of arable, pasture land, settlement and wood land the manor had. They whizzed through it!