My children have been totally immersed in the Middle Ages for several weeks. They just can’t get enough of it! We’ve been using Time Capsule: Medieval England Unit Study by Homeschool-Your-Boys and it is providing almost endless activities for the children to get hands-on with the Medieval England.
This Time Capsule unit study has over 300 activities! The lessons are broken down into 5 lessons a week over the course of 12 weeks. Don’t worry – you can take your time doing the lessons and activities according to your own schedule and the abilities of your children. It’s geared for children between grades 2 & 8. Tristan is almost of this age, and Kallista is just 5 years old. However, they both had a blast and learned so much with all of the hands-on learning.
If you follow the course as written, by the time your children are done they’ll have spent 2 weeks learning about each of the Medieval classes: peasant, tradesman/woman, knight/lady-in-waiting, monk/nun, baron/baroness, and a king/queen.
By diving into each social class, children will get an in-depth feel for life in Medieval England. This isn’t just a general overview course, but it goes deeper without a lot of ‘textbook reading’. This would be perfect for children who don’t enjoy reading and/or like to move around.
This truly is a unit study and encompasses so many subjects in addition to history.
What you’ll learn:
- Science
- Photography
- Language Arts
- Crafts
- Geography
- Art and Music Appreciation
- Drama
- Logic and Math
- Field Trips
My children were having so much fun learning about so many things that I don’t think they even realised that history was the main topic!
One thing that I love about this Medieval England unit study is that all of the hard work has been done for me! There is minimal prepping, and I have most of the materials needed already at home.
The children learned about Medieval England a few times a week. We’d start our learning even before we were out of bed. We read Aesop’s fables together, as suggested in the peasant section. It was a nice way to start the day.
There is a little bit of reading along the way so that children will get some background information, but the majority of the program is based on hands-on activities.
There are other supplemental reading suggestions, but it’s up to you if you’d like to use them – they aren’t required. We did borrow a couple of books from our local library, as well as watching a few shows on BBC and YouTube.
Hands-On Medieval England
During the peasant section, the children learned to weave reeds between posts and cover them with daub to create walls of what is going to become a home for our garden fairies.
As apprentice tradespeople they learned about blacksmithing at a nearby market day. We’ve seen this blacksmith several times over the past few years, and he’s always fascinating to watch! Dad ended up taking this piece home to Canada with him.
As knights the children learned to navigate with some map work and then they learned about the phases of the moon. Here, I’m calling out random phases and they’re pointing to the correct ‘moon’.
As kings and queens, the children designed a coat of arms for the family. Tristan’s view of his family is ‘loving’, and Kallista has a picture of me holding her as a baby. How touching these are! A list of the meanings of colours and symbols are provided to get you started.
I think the project the kids have enjoyed the most to date, was creating a simple oil-burning lamp! We were able to relate this not only to life in Medieval England, but with the smoke it created the children were able to understand why solar lights are so important in India.
We’ve only touched on some of the subjects and topics covered in this package. We were all so engrossed in the learning and fun that I often forgot to get the camera out! I just couldn’t resist adding this photo from the Bruce Festival at Carrickfergus Castle that we attended.
Tristan and Kallista were worried when I said it was time to post this review…they thought that their Medieval England studies were going to come to an end. This definitely won’t be the case. They will continue to learn about the lives of the people who lived right where we are, the only thing that will change is that we won’t go at such a quick pace. We’ll take our time and enjoy our trip back into Medieval England.
Time Capsule: Medieval England could take you a year if you work on it once a week, or you could work more intensively at it and make it into a terrifically fun summer project! Turn it into your own summer camp! The kids will love it!
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Crystal McClean says
How fun! I haven’t read either of those books, though I know they are classics. I’ll put them on my list to read with the kids when they reach the right age.
Have a great time at the Fair!