Robin Hood

Usually during a fun week we revisit something we have studied previously and so I am able to step beck and effectively have a week off, which is rather nice.  To all intents and purposes the children HAVE learnt about Robin Hood prior to this week.  Voracious readers, they made light work of the books I had planned for the 1066 era and onwards.  They begged and begged to be allowed to read the extensive number of Robin Hood books that we had ended up with.  I’m not entirely sure ALL these books are necessary for a full Robin Hood education but we had them, the children were enthusiastic to read them, so I gave in.  They have almost all of them read and have thoroughly enjoyed all of them.  Tomlinson, as per any other book we’ve read of hers, tends to approach history from the woman’s point of view.  As always, we all love Morpurgo’s books (both are the same version under different names with different illustrators) and Williams is, frankly, just a bit of cartoon fun!  Here is our reading list:

     

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I always try to supply dress up for any study I think the children might want to play and I’d collected bits from charity shops over the years.  I did splash out on two matching girl Robin Hood outfits for my twins.  Please could you indulge me a bit (I’ve posted quite a few photos!!):

I suppose the most important thing was to make sure the children understood that Robin Hood and his tales were legend rather than fact.  That was not to say that he didn’t exist, just that the tales probably had a lot of fiction in them!  I had them read through this and this site for some more information about Robin Hood, I asked them to write a ditty about Robin and his Merry Men to the tune of a nursery rhyme, an idea from here which also has many, many activities for slightly younger children than mine.  This was T11’s to the tune of Ba, Ba, Black Sheep:

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Have you any money?

Yes sire, yes sire, bags and bags of money,

Some for the pauper, some for the lame,

and some for the hungry boy who lived down the lane!

From the same website, I also had them draw a cartoon story narration from Robin Hood:

I photocopied an oldyworldy map found from google images and had the children colour the areas covered by Hood:

We have done much work on the oral tradition of passing down legendary tales from one generation to the next in our studies in ancient Greece, Rome, Anglo Saxons and the Vikings.  I had them listen to an oral performance of the tale of Robin Hood, and had them come up with oral renditions themselves.  I also had them make some whimsical puppets to use for imaginative play (drawings I googled a while ago and don’t have the URL):

By far the most fun was had on Thursday, when after quiet time the children came down to this:

There was much excitement figuring out exactly what their mother had planned this time!  Daddy, a trained archery teacher,  was going to oversee an archery competition, with real bows and arrows and whoever won would be declared the real Robin Hood!  Of course, he neglected to tell me that he would be participating too.  I would have made him dress up if I’d known!

Each day they were allowed to watch two episodes of the following DVD.  Even Gary enjoys this and is very worth buying.  We don’t watch broadcast TV so this really appealed to the older four children:

The week went quickly and with much fun.  Next week we start our Easter Adventure Boxes on Marco Polo and  Ancient China (older children) and Mr Men (little ones).  We’re all looking forward to them!