Category: History: Middle Ages
Early Renaissance Art & the Medici Worksheets & Notebook Pages The past few weeks we started learning about the early Renaissance period. Last semester we studied the Middle Ages. We finished in the 1300s with the Black Plague and Hundred Years War. In January, we started Suzanne Strauss Art’s book, The Story of the Renaissance, (affiliate link) which we are using as our spine for the Renaissance and Reformation. It started...
We spent a couple of weeks studying the events of the 1300s. Today I’m going to share the worksheets I made for the kids about the Crusades, Hundred Year’s War, and the Black Plague. I’ll also share the simulation: Will you survive the Black Plague?!! To start, we covered the history of the Crusades, Hundred Year’s War and the Black Plague. We read the chapters in our history book. We...
The kids learned so much from our hands-on activities about feudalism. We did a simulation of feudalism that helped the kids understand the roles and responsibilities of the various members of society. And we also studied of some well-known medieval paintings from that period. So first, a bit about our feudalism worksheets. For this unit, we are using Early Times: The Story of the Middle Ages, (affiliate link) by Suzanne...
What a successful year! As the year draws to a close, I love taking a look at what we’ve accomplished not only in school, but in life in general. I’m not one to make “resolutions” per se, but I do enjoy thinking about what’s to come and seeing just how to make that happen! This year was a *huge* one for my blog. January 5, 2015 was my last official...
The past 3 or 4 weeks, we have been working on our Middle Ages unit again. We had covered up through the 1200s or so last spring and we’ve been studying the 1300s — the Crusades, Black Plague and the Hundred Years War. We had a lot of fun watching Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives (affiliate link, but I suggest you look on youtube to see if it’s available). The 8...
This is a very basic notebook page with a map and photos of Stonehenge. It doesn’t go into a lot of detail, but provides some basic facts about Stonehenge: Stonehenge is a monument located in Wiltshire, England. It is comprised of about 100 huge upright stones placed in a circular layout. While some of the stones probably come from a quarry about 25 miles away, some of the blue stones...
Last week all we did for history was continue reading The Adventures of Robin Hood. (affiliate link). The kids are really loving the book (and so am I!). Each chapter is a complete adventure unto itself. This week we’ll be going into a lot of detail about feudalism (and I created a simulation that I think the kids will really love!), but before we do that, I really wanted to review all...
Middle Ages Projects and Books for Kids! As with a lot of our homeschool curriculum, we’re patching together our Middle Ages Unit. I thought I’d share some of the books, projects, and resources we’ve been using recently as we continue through our studies of the Middle Ages. Yesterday, we got to such an exciting part of our current Middle Ages novel, that we couldn’t stop! We read aloud for nearly...
The last week or so we have learned a lot about King Arthur and Charlemagne. Last week, I shared our monasteries worksheets. This week we finished reading a fabulous book about King Arthur. I’ve read a lot of King Arthur stories/books over the years, but this one was absolutely perfect for our homeschool… with rich exciting tales that the kids and I all loved! I mentioned it last week, but it’s...
Middle Ages Unit: Worksheets on the Medieval Church & the Development of Monasteries This week we talked about Christianity in the early Middle Ages in our homeschool. We read about how the Church was organized and how monasteries began. The history book we are using [primarily Early Times : The Story of the Middle Ages (affiliate link) by Suzanne Strauss Art] went into detail about a couple of the historical figures that went...
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...
Would you believe this is an activity that I created as an introduction to our physics unit on simple machines, gizmos and gadgets?!! Sometimes inspiration just hits! So here’s how it came to be. I was doing some background reading on Sir Isaac Newton, the scientist who developed the Laws of Motion among other things. I learned that while he was at Cambridge University an outbreak of the Black Plague...
The other evening I came home during a thunderstorm. The toads were covering the road leading to our house. Not one or two, but so many that I couldn’t drive the car around them. I went back a little later and there weren’t nearly as many, but still saw at least 50 toads! And saw that even though I was driving about 5mph and swerving wildly from side to side,...
We’ve been reading bits of Castle by David Macaulay aloud together. It is a very detailed account about how a castle and the adjoining town were planned out and built. One section talked about how the castle walls were built. We tried to design our own walls to be as strong as possible. The drawing from Castle shows how thick the castle walls were constructed. We tried to do the...