Hard working farmer driving his load of hay through town
Sarah’s medieval unit was a lot of fun. I am really happy I decided to follow what she was interested in. We had a lot of fun researching the Medieval years through books and the internet and we had great fun setting up our medieval village.
The Lord and Lady watching the village from the top of the castle
We started out our unit by writing down several questions Sarah wanted to know about the Medieval times:
- When were Medieval Times?
- How did people dress?
- How did they do things?
- What is royalty?
- What makes a person royal?
- What are peasants?
- What did people do for fun?
When were Medieval Times? We discovered they were from about the year 1000 CE to about 1500 CE, which brought on a conversation of what BC and CE and AD mean (some websites used AD and some used CE) as well as how far back does recorded time go? And what about before people wrote things down? Which tied in to archaeology and Dinosaur times, and PBS kids Dinosaur Train. Which is a much loved show.
The baking is done, it’s time to take it to share with the other children of the village
How did people dress? Pictures of how medieval ladies dressed was what brought on this unit and so we had a lot of fun researching pictures of ladies and men in their medieval robes. We had a good laugh at the men’s clothing of the late medieval period when they started wearing tight leggings with tunics over top. While researching the dress, we began to notice the differences in clothing between Royalty, merchants and peasants, which led into the questions of “what is royalty?” and “what are peasants?”
And so began a discussion of the feudal system. We discovered many great websites like this one that do a great job of explaining the feudal system, and it opened up a fun conversation of how Kings ruled over other people, how peasants were kept in poverty and on into a discussion on how people were royalty which led into a talk on royal bloodlines and wars between kings (who were often cousins or second cousins) to decide who was more qualified for the throne, and other reasons for war, like wanting more territory, we illustrated this with an example of neighboring farms fighting over each others land, which ended as a discussion on today’s laws and commerce that doesn’t allow (at least in our part of the world) wars between neighbors.
Hard at work raking hay
In learning about peasants and their role in medieval society, their housing, families and work, we learned about medieval farming practices and the importance of the water-powered mill to make flour. We also learned how the scythe and sickle that we sometimes use to cut grass was used even way back then.
A close up of our farmer taking his hay to market with his trusty horse and cart
Our last research topic was what did the Medieval people do for fun? We had a blast researching medieval dances, music, and jousting tournaments with youtube, seriously these re-enactments are amazingly done! This homeschool mom is thankful for people videoing and posting on youtube. I don’t know how else I would get such a great picture in my kids head! I think the kids favourite was learning about jesters. We watched several videos of Jesters and added a jester and his carnival tent to our village.
Tired peasants enjoying the jesters entertainment
We are quite happy with our village. I did help Sarah extensively with the construction of the buildings but all the plastercine people and animals are completely her creation.
Becoming a Country Girl 