Sunday, March 28, 2010

Medieval Party

We finished up our studies of the Medieval Ages this past week. To celebrate we had a medieval party. Grandma was invited and everyone dug through the dress up or made their own costumes.


Grandma came as the Queen's mom and our son Timothy was a black knight. 


I was a queen of France, Goldilocks was the young Lady Guinevere, Little Red Riding Hood was Joan of Arc; and Tom Sawyer was an archer. I suggested he be William Tell, but he wanted to be a plain old archer. Daddy, who is not shown was a Sniggler. Snigglers were eel and frog catchers.

We started the evening out with a medieval feast. But before we could sit down to eat, we needed to make the butter. Everyone helped with shaking the cream, and we finally ended up with whipped butter.


During dinner by candlelight, everyone had an animated conversation about the medieval times we are living in. The queen was especially concerned about all of the silly ideas people were using to ward off the plagues. It seemed to her that they were all of no use. The sniggler was recognized for his very advanced sniggling skills. There was also much conversation between Joan of Arc, the archer and the black knight about the Crusades and the concern over a war breaking out between the Roses. (Yes, I realize that no one could live through all of these different times, but it served as a fun review.) Somehow, the pictures were lost of our dinner. We ate meat pie, rosemary bread, whipped butter, apple pocket pies and pretend mead (orange/lemon aid).

After dinner, we went outside for a few medieval games. We played Ring Round the Rosie. We reviewed how this was a popular game played by kids to deal with the realities of the plagues. We then played Three Throws. This is a very easy game that one can play with dice. You can use one to three dice. Each team throws the dice three times and whoever has the most points wins. This game was fun and got a bit of math in there. It was quite cold by that time (7:30 pm), so costumes got covered up with jackets.


Next, we played Capture the Flag.  It was the girls against the boys with the queen mom as the referee and picture taker. The boys won but only because it is really hard to run with a really long dress on! LOL!

We concluded our games inside with a few rounds of Blindman's Bluff. Some of us were really good at this game and able to identify who had touched us on the first go around and others really struggled.

We sang Sing a Song of Sixpence to Grandma and told her that in the Middle Ages cooks in castles would bake hollow pies and then insert living black birds into them. Much of the food made for the rich in those days was for entertainment as well as eating.

We concluded the evening with a show and tell of the kids' projects over the last few weeks.

This is the kids' diorama of life in a castle.

We learned  lots about stained glass and made some varieties for ourselves.


The kids also made a castle, Tower of London pop-up cards, and bath oils with flowers. It was a very fun evening, and we plan on doing more of these to finish up different historical time periods.

Blessings, Dawn

11 comments:

  1. Oh what great ideas!!!

    Not so sure I would like to be a sniggler!!

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  2. Love all the projects. The kids did a great job. Looks like it was a wonderful celebration.

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  3. Wow, Dawn, you did it again!


    When your all done homeschooling, you'll have to put all of these ideas, crafts, and games into a homeschool newsletter or book.


    I love the bathoil and flowers in the glass jars, and the castle they made. That's neat how you displayed their projects and had this big event to conclude the end of the study. I'm sure the kids will never forget the candlelight dinner. Your mom must be totally impressed with all that your kids are learning!

    Antoinette


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  4. Well done!

    I really enjoyed hearing about your feast and festivities.

    We plan to do something similar when we get through our study of the Middle Ages, we've just been taking way too long to read through so many wonderful living books on the time period.

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  5. Very fun! And congratulations on being the featured blogger this week.

    Jenn

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  6. You are so sweet to always post a comment when I type, and that blesses me so--so many of my friends have stopped blogging (or maybe I just don't have anything to say!) Anyway, I wanted to be sure that I thanked you for that.


    I love this idea. It's amazing to me how homes, and consequently, schools, take on a personality of their own. I imagine yours to be one where the kids are always looking for this out-of-the-box, hilariously funny and fun stuff to do. If I broke out costumes and set up a Medieval party here, my kids would twist their heads to the side and wonder if I bumped mine on the way downstairs. I had to drag my two girls outside for our Olympic races!


    We're studying Medieval times on next year, and you've got me thinking...


    God bless you, Dawn.

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  7. What a great end of your study. We've been studying the same time period and I really wanted to have a unit celebration, but.... I've been a little busy and overwhelmed lately.

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  8. What a fun time! I love that your mom (or dh's mom) came too! What fun to share these memories together! I loved reading about your time. Did you row Duchess Bakes a Cake during this time? It's a really fun book if you haven't yet done it.


    Blessings

    Leslie

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  9. This would be a fun post to add to the CM Carnival that I'm hosting next Tuesday!


    http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_2378.html


    Cindy

    http://ourjourneywestward.com

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  10. You did a superb job on bringing history alive ! You all look like you had a fun and yummy time. I wished we got to see your hubby as a Sniggler. LOL, I had never heard of that one but it makes sense. [0= I think it was you but I told someone recently that William Tell is in my family history. My moms mom maidan name was Tell. You all looked like you had such a fun time. You always make learning so much fun !


    Blessings and ((HUGS))

    In Him<><

    -Mary

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  11. What fun! Love all the ideas here, and I'm sure the kids will remember a great deal since this made it so fun and real for them. :)



    (Visit my NEW blog: <a href="http://seejamieblog.com">See Jamie blog</a>)

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