Viking Unit – Norse Myths, Woodburning Craft and More!

Last week, we combined our study of the Vikings with a new art project — woodburning!   We have just started a new unit on the Middle Ages. Last week, we focused on northern Europe and the Vikings/Norsemen.  We started by learning the location of the Scandinavian countries. We talked about the “barbarian” invasions of the Roman Empire and read that section in our history book.

  • The spine for our Middle Ages unit is Early Times : The Story of the Middle Ages (affiliate link) by Suzanne Strauss Art. We used a book by this author when we studied China’s history and decided to use this one (along with lots of library books). I find these history books work really well for us as read aloud books. I supplement with other history books as well.

If you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you probably notice that we read *a lot* of books. A lot of the time, I read aloud while the kids color or work on other projects.  We used coloring sheets from the Story of the Vikings Coloring Book (affiliate link) pictured below while we read through some of the history sections.

VikingUnitBooks

We also read most of the Norse Myths as well. We all loved these and enjoyed the stories of Odin, Freya, Thor, Loki and more. We used Favorite Norse Myths and D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths. We wound up reading all of the stories from Favorite Norse Myths. While I read aloud, the kids did a really neat art project – woodburning.

I found Viking-style designs online and printed those out. The kids transferred their design onto cedar planks.  They did this by shading in the backside of the design with pencil. We then taped the paper onto the wood plank and the kids traced their design.

Woodburning-Transfer

Once the design was transferred, I gave the kids a thorough safety lesson. I emphasized how hot the tip was, how it would burn off their hair if they let their hair dangle down, or would melt/burn things if they set it down while it was on.  I felt fine letting all of them use the woodburning tool, though I had them wear googles just as an added precaution.

Woodburning-Vikings

This project was a huge hit. In fact, they enjoyed it so much that they each made two woodburning projects… all the while begging for “just one more” Norse Myth! 🙂

Woodburning-2

You can find a free outline map of Europe by clicking this link.

Our Ancient Writing Set has 4 blank writing pages about the Viking Pages

Vikings – 3 pages, Norse Gods – 1 page

Ancient History Writing Paper Set - Viking and the Norse Gods

Ancient History Writing Paper Set

This week we moved on to the early Middle Ages. I’ll share more about that soon! Stay tuned! 🙂 ~Liesl and the Kids

Our other posts in our Middle Ages Unit (which include some free notebook pages):

Some of our other history units (We have many free history and world religions packets/notebook pages.):

Be sure to come visit us on our Homeschool Den Facebook Page!

2 Responses

  1. Terri says:

    Thankyou so much for the resources you provide, you have been a great help to me during our 1st rocky year of homeschooling. I was just wondering, roughly how long do you spend on each topic? A few hours per week over 4 weeks? for example?

    • homeschooldenadmin says:

      Our days vary quite a bit. Right now we’re in the middle of two units (plus our other basic subjects) — one on the Middle Ages and one on cells. We tend to switch back and forth between history and science (ie. not doing them both on the same day… or only spending 10-20 minutes on the “other” subject). Our homeschool day takes us (generally) about 4 hours. The amount of time we spend on our units (which tend to have more involved activities than – say – math) is usually our longest block of the day. We might spend 1 to 1 1/2 hours which would include reading from our history spine, reading the current novel related to our unit (in this case King Arthur… a week or two ago it was The Door in the Wall) and working on a project. While I’m reading they often are working on a craft or coloring. Sometimes we work on a project while watching a documentary. Our units seem to last us about 3-6 weeks. ~Liesl

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