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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!
Like most of our at home camp weeks, we kicked off the week by easing into the topic. We started off with setting up the camp area with some medieval-themed decorations: cue the crowns, castles, foam swords, and any other middle age themed toys you’re little ones have and bring them out to help set the scene! Add some crafts like coat of arms, shields, stained glass, and more to complete the look! And, like all days, we added in some interesting books and some writing / storytelling prompts to keep them learning! Read on to check out the fun!
INTRO
You’re little one may have some exposure or knowledge of the middle ages, but they may not realize this is an age rooted in actual history! Images on shields are not just fancy decorations but part of coat arms, which has quite a bit of symbolism! Castles weren’t just fun and fancy houses to live in but served defensive purposes as well!
A great place to start would be a timeline or talking about where in history these time period took place.
These sites are also great resources with pages on history, concepts, and activities:
- History: Middle Ages for Kids by Ducksters
- The Middle Ages for Kids by Mr. Donn’s Site for Kids & Teachers
Once they’ve gotten the idea of what the middle age were (and what we’re focusing on for the week), then it was off to setting up the learning area – always a fun activity – and then reading, writing, crafting, and experiments!
DECORATE THE CAMP AREA
Decorating the ‘Camp Area’ or the room / area of your house where you’ll have most of your activities is a great way to get the kids excited about the theme of the week! If they’re incredibly crafty and creative, having some extra and opened-ended crafts would be great to keep them engaged. Otherwise, a prepared activity would work well!
If you’ve seen any of our other posts, you’d know that the Medieval Times (or fantasy worlds inspired by that history) are a favorite of our family! So, we brought out a few of our decorations and crafts from previous parties. Luckily, you can still find a number of them online and can pick them up if you want to add them to your decorations!
We started off by hanging up some door and wall covers to make it look like we were in castle: Castle Entrance Door Cover, Castle Stairway Plastic Wall Accents. Then we set up our Color Your Own Castle Playhouse (alternatively you could set up some other castles or tents: Easy Playhouse Blank Castle, Pink Fantasy Castle Play Tent, Knight & Dragon Castle Tent).
As crafts, we created some ‘Stained Glass Art’ using the technique from Crayola: DIY Stained Glass (Note: you will need to wait 2-3 hours for the glue portion to dry, so take that into account for time & planning purposes :)). And we created Coat of Arms to hang up as well. We followed an activity from the Museum of Dufferin: Learning Hub. Toward the middle, there is a great activity for Coat of Arms – with explanations on colors, animals, symbols, etc – perfect for having a simple printout guide!
WEEKLONG PROJECT
At the start of the week, we also introduce a weeklong project – this is great for reinforcing concepts learned throughout the day as well as allowing them to build time and project management skills.
For our weeklong project, we set up a bit of banner paper to create a timeline. We encouraged them to add/draw images of anything they learned throughout the day as well!
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). Here are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
- What Was Feudal System – middle ages feudal system story for kids by The Ancient Library (4m)
- The Middle Ages for kids – 5 things you should know – History for Kids by Smile & Learn (4m)
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 ‘prepared’ a medieval feast with bread and stew! Time-wise, we did not make an attempt to make the bread from scratch (or a mix) and just used ready made biscuits. We did have a bread making activity planned for a later date, but you could definitely add that in for today 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:
- Weird but True: Know It All Middle Ages by Michael Burgan
- It’s a Feudal, Feudal World by Stephen Shapiro
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: MEDIEVAL, MIDDLE AGES, HISTORY
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 but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- Do you know of any stories set in the middle ages? Which one is your favorite and why?
- Write a story about two kids growing up in the middle ages who find a secret passage in their lord’s castle. Where does it lead and what trouble would the kids run into?
- Imagine traveling back in time to the middle ages. Which gadgets, tools, or items would you bring in your backpack with you to help you survive a day in the life of the middle ages?
- Write a story about a birthday party set in the middle ages. What games would you play? What types of food would you serve?
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!
We picked up a few medieval-themed building projects so they could build and add to their Lego sets!
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!
