Awesome History Middle Ages: West Africa- Magna Carta

 Our 6th episode featured chapters 55-57: West Africa, Cathedrals, and the Magna Carta

This time we had two active activities: a  Mansa Musa themed obstacle course outside, and a mancala game going on inside.

Our art project was making sealing wax and seals (like the seals on the Magna Carta).

We made the seals out of pipe cleaners covered in foil, and they worked pretty well.

I used candle wax as the sealing wax, and that turned out to be a bit too rigid -it tended to pop off the "letter."

I think adding some paraffin or oil would keep it more flexible next time.

Our snack was rolled sugar cookies which the kids cut into cathedral shapes (with a knife).

They then cut windows and filled the space with crushed hard candy.

The way to do this is to roll it on parchment so that you don't have to move it after it's been cut!

 You just slide the parchment onto a baking sheet.

Yummy and beautiful!

Awesome History Middle Ages: Vikings-Crusades

 The 4th session was chapters 49-51; Vikings, Castles, and Knights.

We started with the art project- body traces so that the kids could design their own armor!

Very fun!  I have them hanging on the stairs since some of my kids now wear very large life sized armor!

The active activity was castle building.  I gave them a choice of building materials, but in the end everyone wanted to build with the large cardboard bricks (presumably because you could build a castle you could step into).

And, of course, Legos.




The snack was mincemeat pie (and grape juice "wine"). 

This was the first time I had made mincemeat pie with actual  meat, but it was really tasty! I used ground beef, apples, whole ground oranges, and whatever dried fruit I had on hand (cherries, apricots, and raisins).


The 5th session was chapters 52-54: Normans- Crusades.

Our active activity was the game Going to Jerusalem (which turns out to be the original name for Musical Chairs!)

Our art activity was designing coats of arms.


Our snack was apples, cheese, and bread.

And I'm almost caught up!

Marching Through Time

 This is the encampment of all the historical reenactors, lined up chronologically.

We had a lot of fun with the Romans- they let us do a little sword fighting!

 And we had a great time with the War of the Roses camp.  They let us try on armor!

 Leena and Zorg squired for Mxyl with impressive results!

We like armor!


We had a lovely time chatting with all the reenactors.



We also enjoyed watching these Hessians drilling and firing on the parade ground.



In the distance, you can see the historic house (Marrietta House).  This was the first year we toured the actual house, and we were very impressed!

We loved the 12 foot ceilings and the quirky layout of the building (added on rooms for a family with 11 children!).

I think what impressed the kids the most was that the original family had 9 children, but only 4 survived past the age of 5- tragically, a common story in those days.

I know that without modern  medicine, only 3 of my own children would likely have survived to that age, and that is not factoring in any epidemics!  Modern medicine, one of those things I thank God for!

Awesome History Middle Ages: King Arthur - Alfred the Great

 This was actually 2 classes, I'm trying to catch up!

The first class covered Clovis, King Arthur, Monastic life, and Christian Africa.

Our active activity was a treasure hunt: The Quest for the Grail!  This was an actual treasure hunt with clues leading to the fancy cup.

 The art activity was calligraphy.  We cut nibs from goose feathers, and used watercolor ink.

We learned that pen knives really are the best tools for turning feathers into pens!

We also learned that cutting a perfect nib that will stand up to lots of writing is pretty difficult.  

Fortunately, cutting a simple nib for mucking about is easy!

 The snack was an Ethiopian spiced honey bread called ambasha. It was very similar to this ambasha recipe, except it had about 1/4 cup of honey also (you would add it along with the water).

Traditional ambasha is flatter than mine came out, but it was seriously delicious!  We ate ours with butter and honey and drank diluted honey as "mead."

That was A Child's History of the World chapters 42-44.

The following week got simplified due to illness.

We did chapters 46-48: Arabic technology, Charlemagne, and Alfred the Great.

Our active activity was Prisoner's Base (for all of Charlemagne's battles).

Our art activity was supposed to be making metal lanterns like we did here.  We were feeling pretty under the weather, so I still have a bunch of ice filled cans in my freezer!

We kept the snack, of course!  We had "Alfred's  Cakes" for the cakes King Alfred burned. With unintentional historical accuracy, I  lost track of time and burned them a bit on the bottom! We also had Brie cheese, reputed to be Charlemagne's favorite.

At this point  I'm 3 classes behind in blogging these classes, so I'll  keep doing double until I catch up...

Metalworking

 We've shifted the focus from knights and the ruling classes over to artisans.

What I would have loved to do was do some real smithing, but, lacking a forge, anvil,  and the ability to melt metal, we felt this project, combined with You Tubes of actual smiths, was good enough!

I collected cans, filled them with water, and left them on the porch to freeze.  This touched off three days of fine weather with temps reaching 70, but, last weekend, they finally froze.

One kid at a time, each Zoomlian picked a can and drew a simple design on the outside with a water based marker. Gloves can be helpful here.

 They then hammered a nail through the can (into the ice) to form a pattern of holes along their design.  The key thing here is to rotate the can so that you are always hammering the nail straight down into the can.

Once the design was complete, we removed the ice with a quick soak of the can in warm water.

 Because the water had been in the can for several days, the dissolved air (which mixes in from the pressure in the water system) had dissipated, leaving the ice crystal clear.  You can do this with ice cubes by boiling the water before putting it in the trays, and, indeed, the "solid" ice was slower to melt than our usual "cloudy" ice.

Smaller kids needed more help, including heroic nail holding by a nervous adult.  But they all came out nicely, and no fingers were lost in the making of this project!

We put candles inside our completed lanterns, and ate dinner by candle light.   

It wasn't actually this dark in the dining room!




 By a happy coincidence, we ended up doing this craft on Candlemas (which you may call Groundhog Day), the traditional day for blessing candles!

Gingerbread Castle

On the first real snow, we make a gingerbread house. 

This lovely custom has a very practical purpose: it almost never snows before Christmas, and thus the perennial craziness of making a gingerbread house is separated from the perennial craziness of Christmas prep.

This year, for some reason, we decided to do a castle!



Our castle is a triangular keep with a triangular curtain wall.  This is in keeping with the architectural reality that such a structure will have six walls and the historical reality that I have six children.

As someone who has made (or assisted with) a lot of gingerbread houses, here's the secret: decorate the walls before you construct the house!

That way you can decorate on a flat surface, allow the decorations to dry in their correct positions, and then glue it all together with royal icing (supported in their upright positions by canned goods).


If there is another trick I know, it would be: let it dry overnight before you add a roof or try to move your structure.  I no longer try to fudge that one.

This one wasn't going further than the kids, so I didn't bother with roofs and so forth.  Actually, I found that none of the kids thought to put a door on their wall, which is one way to make your castle impregnable, I guess!

Back to The Walters Round 2

 Besides all the exhibits, The Walters also has a kids' center in the basement, and it's loaded with things to touch and do.

Here they have a castle shaped puppet theater with an astonishing variety of beautiful puppets.

They also have a swoon worthy dress up bin as well as racks and racks of games, books, and toys keyed to the exhibits in their collection.  Here the Zoomlians are building castles.


 Best of all, they have a corner of touchable stuff: fossils, coral, shells, alligator heads, insects (encased in plastic), replicas of Egyptian artifacts, and (our favorite) a suit of chain mail with a helmet.

Everyone had to try it!

Oob felt the helmet was enough to complete his outfit.

Klenda wore it with style.

 Choclo liked it, but it was heavy!



Leena tried the mail with the helmet, which was even heavier.  Here she is looking fierce.








Zorg was pretty serious about the whole thing.






But Mxyl wore his helmet the way he wears his fedora:  at a jaunty angle!

Back to The Walters Round 1

I've mentioned that we could live at The Walters, right?

The Chamber of Wonders alone would make up for all the visiting school groups!

We listened to an audio book of The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler in the early fall, and it was clearly on our minds!  If you haven't read it, it's the story of a brother and sister who run away to The Met, and it was one of my favorite books as a kid (that and My Side of the Mountain, do we detect a theme?).

Anyway, the Chamber of Wonders is what our museum wants to be when it grows up.

In the top picture, the table Leena is sitting at is covered with cases of butterflies, beetles, and magnifying glasses so you can see them better.

Klenda is looking at a dazzling display of jewelry and precious artifacts.

In the other picture, you can see a really large alligator, the mummy of a young girl, skulls of various bears, many amazing paintings and a white peacock. 

What you can't see is the beautifully carved cases that Mxyl is looking at.  They are filled with shells, crystals, snakes, and every imaginable natural wonder or curiosity!

 From there we went to the Knight's Hall, where Zorg and Klenda played checkers, Choclo and Oob played chess, and Leena and I played Medieval themed charades.

Meanwhile, Mxyl went through the Medieval galleries looking at all the art and artifacts.

 Next we went through the Egyptian stuff.  It wasn't part of our theme, but Choclo loves Egyptian stuff!  This time he was most interested in the animal mummies: cats, falcons, crocodiles, and baboons.  They also had a "mummy" that was actually dirt and seeds (wrapped up and painted like a mummy).  It would have been buried with someone to grow their food in the afterlife.

One of the things I love most about the Walters is how beautiful the whole museum is.  Just walking through the rooms is a treat. 

We went off through the main museum into the Hackerman House to see their Japanese collection.

The house itself is carefully restored mansion from the late 1800s.  Just gorgeous!

I am always taken with the graceful sweep of the main stairway.  Not only is the staircase itself breathtakingly elegant, it is topped by a dome appointed in carved plaster and crowned with stained glass.

The Zoomlians wanted to know why we couldn't live in a house like this!

 Hmmm... 

For starters, here are my very elegant children on this elegant stairway!

Interestingly, while most of the house is very "Gilded Age" with the items being shown as an American collector would showcase them, the upstairs rooms show Eastern restraint.  There the swords, armor, and other artifacts are displayed against a back drop of bare walls and tatami mats.