This will be my last post on the crusades (ye ha! We’re done!). Just to get you in the mood for another information overload to do with the Holy wars, here’s a fun music video which towards the end handily touches on the effects of the crusades. There is one of the videos for almost every period in history. So cool!
In the whole 174 years of the crusades, just 24 years involved fighting. So what on earth did they do for the other 150 years? And how did these ‘extra curriculum’ activities impact the effects of the crusades?
This era in history has caused me to dig really deep to find meaningful, hands on activities; and here I almost came up blank. Maybe a historical discussion? Somehow use a map creatively? Nothing really sparked my imagination, so I left it.
Just recently we had done a study on Battuta, an Islamic explorer, and it was the map we made to show his travels that finally gave me a very simple, inexpensive way to wrap up our studies of the crusades (which I was anxious to do):
I typed out some information pertaining to the effects the crusades had on the European world:
I printed out images of all the effects I could think of to use as cues for the children and gave them photocopies:
They went through these images, explaining to me what each represented and stuck them onto the map, making a collage. Not brilliant by any means, but it would do and was a fun, easy finale to our crusades studies, tying together all we had learnt:
Here is our final map come collage to show the effects of the crusades:
And that is that. No more crusades. I’m not unhappy about that.
Oooohhhh, I like that idea. It’s kind of like looking at the “Great Exchange” when Columbus came over to America and what went back to Europe and what came over to America.
Thanks for the vote of confidence. I am pleased it’s over now, though!
And now onto the plague! I know how much more excited you are about that! 🙂
I really am much more excited than I ought to be about something that wiped out a third of all mankind. I’m sure a head doctor would have a field day with me!
LOL I know how you feel. That is the way I feel about Ancient Egypt about right now. 🙂
It’s funny, at the start it all feels very exciting but by the end it really doesn’t! Onwards and upwards…plague next!
Nice work! It is such a great feeling to finish a unit. I am always excited to start a unit and relieved to finish one.
So do I! I suppose that’s what keeps home schooling so interesting though – the continual change of subject. I’d hate to be a teacher in a school where you have to teach the same thing each year.
Just to say, it is amaizing what you all do, I read it with great interest. Everything you put on the website is brilliant, Love Carolyn xxxx
Hi Carolyn! Thank you so much for taking the time to comment, and for following along!
I know how you feel. I like to really dive into a topic, but sometimes things drag on for much longer. You’ve all done really well to learn so much from this one topic!
Thank you Hwee. I think you and I school very similarly (I could be wrong!), in that we both tend to go to great depths. Thing is, once the interest has gone it becomes a slightly obsolete study. Better to study for as long as the interest is there and then leave it. I’m afraid I’m a bit pedantic about finishing things, which isn’t always a good thing.
I’m not far behind you in terms of being pedantic about finishing things. That’s why every week or so Tiger hears me say, “We really should get back to Marco Polo and do the rest of it.”
I understand your relief. Sometimes we just keep on finding such fun and interesting things to do and forget there is a whole history ahead of us. I have been there, too. I am looking forward to seeing what you have planned for the plague. That should be very interesting.
At lunch, we have been listening to some mp3 recordings. We just finished a two-day listen to Typhoid Mary – so interesting.
I don’t know how I missed posting yesterday…