Amazing Time Traveling Adventures – a Medieval History Week: Castle Day

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Welcome to our “Time Travelling Adventures – A Medieval History Week” – an at home week filled with days of relaxed learning and fun activities all themed to the wondrous medieval era! Young knights, squires, princes, and princesses will hardly realize their learning all about history as they embark on a journey of bringing the Middle Ages to life!

For this day, we learned all about castles: how and why they were made, what happened in castles. Then we created a few of our own! Read on to check out a fun filled day of learning, reading, crafts, and activities all on amazing castles!

A TYPICAL DAY

All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 Our relaxed & learning fun day kicks off with an introduction to the day’s theme. Then, we move onto videos and themed activities (reading, writing – or story telling – time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments). Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂

INTRO

One can hardly think of Medieval Times without images of glorious castles coming to mind! But your little ones may not realize that castles were more than houses for the kings and queens. Several nobles and servants lived within the walls as well. Moreover, castles served as a stronghold, protecting those within it.

If you’re looking for some more quick facts, check out these great sites:

WHAT TO WATCH

We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Below are some of the videos we picked from for the day:

FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS

What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack??? Including the snack in your theme of the day! We find that our kiddos are more than happy to eat the snacks they create especially when they can arrange them into fun shapes and scenes!

For our snack of the day, we opted for snacking on some Chessmen Butter Cookies (mostly for the crowns and knights 😉

We did, however, create a castle shaped cake for an Ultimate Dragon Party that’s definitely worth looking into if you have the time!

READING

It’s no secret that reading is an important part of learning, which is why we pick out a handful of books that are fun and filled with some learning tidbits. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned! These are a few we picked from for the day:

Diary of a Castle Adventure by Nicholas Harris
Inside Out Medieval Castle: Explore the Ancient Fortress Behind the Iron Gates! By Justine Ciovacco

WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS

Just like reading, writing is a great way to keep kids learning by both encouraging their creativity and thought process as well as helping them practice their motor skills and penmanship.

If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: HISTORY, MEDIEVAL TIMES, CASTLES

If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. This was our writing prompt of the day (and we offered up some examples as well) but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!

What do you think would be the most fun thing to do in a castle? What about the least fun?
If you could create a castle, what would it look like? Draw a picture!
If you could visit a real castle, which one would it be and why?

CREATE & CRAFT

If you’ve got a crafty little one, a simple craft is a great way to keep them interested in the topic. While their creative juices are flowing, you can also chat about what they’ve learned so far or ask them what else they’re excited about learning!

For our crafts of the day, we gave them a few options that would help them enhance their pretend play or add in some of what they learned.

Continue decorating the large cardboard castles (from yesterday).
Paint Wooden Castles (which you can pick up from Michaels). While we did not paint these for this day, we have done this for our Ultimate Dragon Party (picture above :))
Print out a Castle to Color: We found this My Family Printable Castle Activity from Make Time Together that worked really well!

STEM & STEAM ACTIVITIES

While crafting and writing get their creativity and imagination flowing, we also like to add in an activity that gets them thinking along the lines of science, technology, engineering, or math! These engaging activities or experiments are a great way to keep them learning!

Build a Paper Castle out of boxes & toilet paper rolls: Box and Toilet Paper Roll Castle by All Free Paper Crafts
Sandcastles: If you can head out to a sandbox or beach, pick up some castle molds (you can usually find them in Dollar Stores or dollar sections during the summer) and build the sturdiest sand castles you can! If you’re not anywhere near sand, you can also find a small ouch of kinetic sand at most stores.
Minecraft Castles: If you’re little one(s) are fans of Minecraft, they may want to try their hand at building a castle! We stumbled across these AMAZING videos from English Heritage while looking for other castle videos and were incredibly inspired! While these castles are quite elaborate, the videos give some tips and tricks to making some castles of your own! So much fun!

THANK YOU

Thank you for checking out our at home learning fun article! If you enjoyed this post, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest

Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other Medieval History Week days, History Weeks, Magical Medieval Party, as well as our DIY At Home Camps!

Happy Learning!