Two years ago we reviewed Homeschool In The Woods Project Passport World History Study: The Middle Ages and my children had a ball with it! It sparked the fire for them wanting to learn more about this time period and Kallista was particularly interested in learning more about knights. So today we’re sharing with you the HSITW Knights Lap-Pak!
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Homeschool In The Woods was very kind in gifting us their HISTORY Through the Ages Hands-on History K-2 Lap-Pak: Knights and really made Kallista excited to learn! This Lap-Pak is geared towards children in the kindergarten to grade 2 range; however, Tristan also very much enjoyed learning alongside Kallista and he’s in grade 4. So once again, this shows how HSITW products are very flexible and can easily suit a wider range of ages both older and younger. This also means I could use the same project for my children without having to find an equivalent for Tristan to do. To ‘up the level,’ I had Tristan do more reading and I expected more from him in terms of his answers for the projects.
We live not too far from the best-preserved castle in Northern Ireland. It’s from the Norman period and parts of the old city wall are still intact. Many who grew up here (like Phil), take it for granted and aren’t interested in local history, but our children have me. I’m from Canada and think castles are cool. I say, let’s learn while the kids are interested, and that’s the great thing about home education; we can follow the children’s interests!
We were fortunate that while the children were working on the Knights Lap-Pak that there was a storytime at Carrickfergus castle and we could go in a little early and stay a little later to wander around (in fact, I had to drag the kids out at closing time).
A new addition to the castle exhibitions is a place where you can get up close to the armour. The kids could feel how cool it was (and imagine how hot it could get), as well as feel the weight of the chain mail. It’s little opportunities like this that are awesome when available. Personally, I think destinations like this should do more to promote fun learning, and perhaps one day you’ll see HSITW projects being sold within the castles themselves to continue the learning experience of children once they leave! But we’re homeschoolers, so we automatically do things like this 😉
The children took their time putting this Lap-Pak together between other projects (it travels well so we took it along on train journeys, too). I wanted to keep it fun for them, so I didn’t rush them as they always came back to it and I wanted to give them time to digest the information they were learning. The pack comes with a booklet that contains all of the info they’ll need to fill in the elements, but because they wanted to learn as much as possible, we took a trip to the library and picked up a few books for the children to learn a little more, particularly Tristan, who would read aloud from the books before each element of the Lap-Pak was done. The book that proved the most useful was How To Live Like A Medieval Knight.
The Hands-on History Knightsf Lap-Pak Contains:
The PDF downloads contain a booklet with all the info you’ll need, directions on how to put together each element, all of the parts to print for the elements, as an audio file so that children can listen to the knights booklet in addition to reading it themselves.
Here are the Lap-Pak elements included:
- The Feudal System
- What is a Knight?
- Becoming a Knight
- The Knighting Ceremony
- What Does a Knight Do for Fun?
- A Knight’s Armor
- The Tournament
- A Knight’s Weapons
- Heraldry
- The Code of Chivalry
- Crusaders
- Famous Knights
- Vocabulary
What we think about the Knights Lap-Pak
My children really enjoyed all of the movable parts to the elements; the knighting ceremony where you can move the sword up and down, and the jousting tournament where you can move the knight on horseback across the project, and the knight’s helmet that has a moving visor is simple, effective, and fun! But don’t take my word for it, you can hear it straight from them:
Our family absolutely love Homeschool In The Woods products, and this Knights Lap-Pak is just the right size to give kids a good insight into the life of a knight, and plenty of scope for further learning. The Lap-Pak can be adjusted to various abilities so that children of different ages can use it, which is just perfect for homeschool families, as well as those families who have children who want to learn about knights. And as with all HSITW projects, they are self-paced, fun, and take the mystery out of history!
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