Medieval History Options

[MiddleCourt]

My kids attend an enrichment program one day a week. Next year they’ll be studying medieval history. We don’t always follow along with what the program does, but medieval history sounds super fun, so we’re going to focus on that next year. Im kind of maxed out in all areas of life right now, so I’m hoping to find something spelled out for me (I know I can just read SOTW and choose activities out of it, but I want something more structured). All the medieval studies I’ve found are part of an all in one program. MFW, wayfarer’s, etc. I don’t need science or Bible, since I have that covered already. I want ONLY history stretching from medieval times to the reformation. Does anyone know of something like this that already exists?

I like a lot of the hands on activities in MFW from Rome to Reformation, but it spends the first 13 weeks on Rome. Which is interesting, but again, I want to focus on medieval history and I’ll be paying for a science and Bible that I most likely won’t use. Is my only option to spend the summer making units based on topics that will come up during that time period (monasteries/monks, castles, famous kings and queens, etc.)? 🤪

As a side note- we do not do a 4 year chronological history cycle. My kids are 7 and 9 (with 5 yr old sis joining in next year), so I just pick a history that sounds fun for us to do on a year to year basis. I’m not too concerned with them memorizing lots of details at this point; I just want to get a flavor of the medieval/Middle Ages/renaissance world. The kinder will be doing her own thing so this will be focused on a 2nd and 4th grader. Thanks!

[caffeineandbooks]

Is your enrichment day focussed on reading, so you are wanting to add structured activities, or is it activity based, so that you want to add in some reading? 

Your kids really are the perfect ages for SOTW 2, so my first instinct would have been to go in that direction.  You could get the audiobooks and listen when driving, or you could read to them and ask them to narrate what they remember.  The activity book provides a bit more structure in an open-and-go way: a coloring page to keep their hands busy while they listen, comprehension questions to check understanding, and sample narrations to help you gauge level as well as activities.  It's up to you whether you want to get them to create narration pages as well.

Another option, similar to the SOTW activity guide but not as obviously broken into weekly bites, might be Days of Knights and Damsels: https://www.amazon.com/Days-Knights-Damsels-Activity-Guide/dp/1556522916/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=days+of+knights+and+damsels&qid=1616383045&sr=8-1

If you have scope to stray into literature, there are loads of fun things in this year: Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, Vikings, knights, castles, Robin Hood, King Arthur, Aladdin, Sinbad.  If you just got a big stack of picture book versions and read your way through it, it would be time well spent!  It would give the "flavor" of the era as you say, and still be easy and enjoyable for everyone.  Again, the SOTW activity guide has lit suggestions, but the Amazon search feature is pretty good too 🙂  Brother Hugo and the Bear is my current favorite picture book for this era!  James Rumford and Eric Kimmel both have lovely picture book versions of Beowulf too, and Trina Schart Hyman has illustrated several beautiful knights and castles ones - the Kitchen Knight and others. Stone Giant by Jane Sutcliffe is a lovely one about Michelangelo's David.  If you wanted to add output, you could ask the kids to keep a book journal: they copy the title and author and draw a picture, then write (or dictate) an age-appropriate length summary of the story.  

If you were happy for your history to stray into the area of art, you might get some mileage out of Artistic Pursuits' K-3 program - there's a medieval book and a Renaissance book, each designed to take a semester, that would have you look together at a masterwork each week and create a project inspired by it.  You could check it out here (scroll down and check out books 3 and 4): https://artisticpursuits.com/k-1st-2nd-3rd

A picture study type option could be Picture That! Knights and Castles - large famous artworks on a double page spread, then zoomed in on the next page to point out interesting details you may have missed.  This link is to Amazon for the reviews and description, but you might purchase on Thrift or Abe books or something instead: https://www.amazon.com/Picture-That-Knights-Alex-Martin/dp/1587284413/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_img_13?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=5KQ0NCZQQ3AY69GPGMZK

At that age, we enjoyed Usborne Mosaic Sticker Castles.  It looks like busywork, using little sticker squares and triangles to make mosaic pictures, but it was quite a good spatial reasoning workout too as they figured out how to flip and rotate pieces and images: https://www.amazon.com/Mosaic-Sticker-Castles-Nayera-Everall/dp/1409581306/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=usborne+mosaic+sticker+castle&qid=1616383270&sr=8-1

It sounds like time and energy are at a premium for you.  I try to send the kids to my mum for a day before we start the school year, and I spend the entire day with my laptop, a vertical file and the photocopier.  We do SOTW with another family, so I'm committed to keeping a schedule.  I photocopy the coloring and map pages for my family and split them into manilla folders, numbered 1-42, and stick them in the suspension folder.  I add any other coloring pages I might have and create a master list of accompanying books or projects (eg art projects, novels, picture books, primary source studies; at different times I've found free mom-made timeline cards online so those go in too).  When we sit down to read the chapter, I pull out the manilla file with the matching number, the kids color if they want to while I read, then we use the activity guide questions and narrate, complete the mapwork, and appropriate aged kids do the timeline.  On other days of the week I pick and choose from my list of accompanying stuff.  If we have both time and resources we might spend literally hours across several days exploring deeper, but if it's a busy week for us (or a resource poor chapter) I read the chapter, they narrate and we move on, no guilt.  The basic skeleton is there before the year begins, so week to week I just spend ten minutes looking over the coming week on the calendar and highlight the things from the master list that I want to try to get to.

Medieval and renaissance history has so much fun stuff for these ages!  I hope you find exactly what you're looking for and have a blast ❤️

 

[MiddleCourt]

1 hour ago, caffeineandbooks said:

Is your enrichment day focussed on reading, so you are wanting to add structured activities, or is it activity based, so that you want to add in some reading? 

Your kids really are the perfect ages for SOTW 2, so my first instinct would have been to go in that direction.  You could get the audiobooks and listen when driving, or you could read to them and ask them to narrate what they remember.  The activity book provides a bit more structure in an open-and-go way: a coloring page to keep their hands busy while they listen, comprehension questions to check understanding, and sample narrations to help you gauge level as well as activities.  It's up to you whether you want to get them to create narration pages as well.

Another option, similar to the SOTW activity guide but not as obviously broken into weekly bites, might be Days of Knights and Damsels: https://www.amazon.com/Days-Knights-Damsels-Activity-Guide/dp/1556522916/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=days+of+knights+and+damsels&qid=1616383045&sr=8-1

If you have scope to stray into literature, there are loads of fun things in this year: Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, Vikings, knights, castles, Robin Hood, King Arthur, Aladdin, Sinbad.  If you just got a big stack of picture book versions and read your way through it, it would be time well spent!  It would give the "flavor" of the era as you say, and still be easy and enjoyable for everyone.  Again, the SOTW activity guide has lit suggestions, but the Amazon search feature is pretty good too 🙂  Brother Hugo and the Bear is my current favorite picture book for this era!  James Rumford and Eric Kimmel both have lovely picture book versions of Beowulf too, and Trina Schart Hyman has illustrated several beautiful knights and castles ones - the Kitchen Knight and others. Stone Giant by Jane Sutcliffe is a lovely one about Michelangelo's David.  If you wanted to add output, you could ask the kids to keep a book journal: they copy the title and author and draw a picture, then write (or dictate) an age-appropriate length summary of the story.  

If you were happy for your history to stray into the area of art, you might get some mileage out of Artistic Pursuits' K-3 program - there's a medieval book and a Renaissance book, each designed to take a semester, that would have you look together at a masterwork each week and create a project inspired by it.  You could check it out here (scroll down and check out books 3 and 4): https://artisticpursuits.com/k-1st-2nd-3rd

A picture study type option could be Picture That! Knights and Castles - large famous artworks on a double page spread, then zoomed in on the next page to point out interesting details you may have missed.  This link is to Amazon for the reviews and description, but you might purchase on Thrift or Abe books or something instead: https://www.amazon.com/Picture-That-Knights-Alex-Martin/dp/1587284413/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_img_13?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=5KQ0NCZQQ3AY69GPGMZK

At that age, we enjoyed Usborne Mosaic Sticker Castles.  It looks like busywork, using little sticker squares and triangles to make mosaic pictures, but it was quite a good spatial reasoning workout too as they figured out how to flip and rotate pieces and images: https://www.amazon.com/Mosaic-Sticker-Castles-Nayera-Everall/dp/1409581306/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=usborne+mosaic+sticker+castle&qid=1616383270&sr=8-1

It sounds like time and energy are at a premium for you.  I try to send the kids to my mum for a day before we start the school year, and I spend the entire day with my laptop, a vertical file and the photocopier.  We do SOTW with another family, so I'm committed to keeping a schedule.  I photocopy the coloring and map pages for my family and split them into manilla folders, numbered 1-42, and stick them in the suspension folder.  I add any other coloring pages I might have and create a master list of accompanying books or projects (eg art projects, novels, picture books, primary source studies; at different times I've found free mom-made timeline cards online so those go in too).  When we sit down to read the chapter, I pull out the manilla file with the matching number, the kids color if they want to while I read, then we use the activity guide questions and narrate, complete the mapwork, and appropriate aged kids do the timeline.  On other days of the week I pick and choose from my list of accompanying stuff.  If we have both time and resources we might spend literally hours across several days exploring deeper, but if it's a busy week for us (or a resource poor chapter) I read the chapter, they narrate and we move on, no guilt.  The basic skeleton is there before the year begins, so week to week I just spend ten minutes looking over the coming week on the calendar and highlight the things from the master list that I want to try to get to.

Medieval and renaissance history has so much fun stuff for these ages!  I hope you find exactly what you're looking for and have a blast ❤️

 

So many awesome suggestions, thanks! The enrichment program is an art school that studies one time period a year, and learns of it through art. They encourage families to follow along their SOTW schedule, but it’s totally optional. So, I was thinking of using SOTW as my spine and adding in lots of books and activities to go with it. I usually have lots of ideas, but then get overwhelmed at all the books/fun things to do, that I have a hard time doing any of it. I think I could really benefit from laying the year out this summer as you suggested. 

[2_girls_mommy]

SOTW and activity guide is the way to go!! I have used the activity guide to do art all the way to high school in co-ops, and used the scope and sequence of it to plan history lessons there too, assigning other texts to older students instead.  

If it is the unstructured-ness of it that you find overwhelming, find a way to structure it for you. I always have a plan on how it works.  This year, I am just reading a chapter a week to my 1st grader.  At the time that we read it she colors a picture and does the mapwork.  If there is what I consider a super easy project suggestion that I can do right then i do it.  (Like some are board games or something.) Other projects I think are doable, but I need a Pringles can or something.  So I just add Pringles to the grocery list, and we do it the next week.  I do not always line the project up with that week's reading. We can be moving onto something else, but review Alexander the Great as we make a quick lighthouse the next week.  

I feel the same about library books.  I have a library day.  I try to reserve the next coulple of week's books once a week.  You don't know when they will come if if someone else has them checked out.  In a perfect world, there will be a book on Greek mythology in my library basket the week of Greek mythology in SOTW. But it doesn't matter.  We read those books at bedtime, as supplemental.  So we may read something about the Trojan Horse a month after we studied it, but we can talk about remember this.  Here's a great book about it. 

Also, sometimes I get too many books on a topic, because I reserve all that my library has.  Then I might just pick one that looks good and return the rest.  

So I don't plan out my readings or projects.  But we do them. 

 

When my bigs were little, and I had two at once.  I was more structured.  I had to plan projects in advance and I read through the books a little more in advance.  Back then I read one section of SOTW at a time instead of a whole chapter, so we did history twice a week instead of once a week like I do it now with LO. (reading the library books as part of bedtime reading means we are actually doing history every night anyway.) 

The main thing is to make a system and stick with.  Tuesdays are read the chapter and do mapwork day.  Thursdays after math are project days.  Pick up library books every Saturday so that new ones to tie in are coming in constantly.  Just make a plan and do something in that time period!  

[ScoutTN]

Yep, SOTW and lots of books! Easy, inexpensive and fun!

 A little hunting will turn up multiple booklists to add to the ones in the SOTW Activity Guide. SO many fun picture books!
 

Adam of the Road, The Door in the Wall, Robin Hood, and King Arthur were our favorite RAs. 
 

We all loved Med-Ren so much that we took two years on it the first time around! 

[MiddleCourt]

1 hour ago, 2_girls_mommy said:

SOTW and activity guide is the way to go!! I have used the activity guide to do art all the way to high school in co-ops, and used the scope and sequence of it to plan history lessons there too, assigning other texts to older students instead.  

If it is the unstructured-ness of it that you find overwhelming, find a way to structure it for you. I always have a plan on how it works.  This year, I am just reading a chapter a week to my 1st grader.  At the time that we read it she colors a picture and does the mapwork.  If there is what I consider a super easy project suggestion that I can do right then i do it.  (Like some are board games or something.) Other projects I think are doable, but I need a Pringles can or something.  So I just add Pringles to the grocery list, and we do it the next week.  I do not always line the project up with that week's reading. We can be moving onto something else, but review Alexander the Great as we make a quick lighthouse the next week.  

I feel the same about library books.  I have a library day.  I try to reserve the next coulple of week's books once a week.  You don't know when they will come if if someone else has them checked out.  In a perfect world, there will be a book on Greek mythology in my library basket the week of Greek mythology in SOTW. But it doesn't matter.  We read those books at bedtime, as supplemental.  So we may read something about the Trojan Horse a month after we studied it, but we can talk about remember this.  Here's a great book about it. 

Also, sometimes I get too many books on a topic, because I reserve all that my library has.  Then I might just pick one that looks good and return the rest.  

So I don't plan out my readings or projects.  But we do them. 

 

When my bigs were little, and I had two at once.  I was more structured.  I had to plan projects in advance and I read through the books a little more in advance.  Back then I read one section of SOTW at a time instead of a whole chapter, so we did history twice a week instead of once a week like I do it now with LO. (reading the library books as part of bedtime reading means we are actually doing history every night anyway.) 

The main thing is to make a system and stick with.  Tuesdays are read the chapter and do mapwork day.  Thursdays after math are project days.  Pick up library books every Saturday so that new ones to tie in are coming in constantly.  Just make a plan and do something in that time period!  

I do think I am over complicating it. Maybe there’s no premade history only study of this because most people do what you do! My problem is that I work from home. While it’s extremely flexible, it’s still a responsibility and very hard to make a consistent routine like you mentioned. So I spend all this time planning and may actually have very little time to execute it week to week. But I am praying to be able to quit.

[ScoutTN]

27 minutes ago, MiddleCourt said:

I do think I am over complicating it. Maybe there’s no premade history only study of this because most people do what you do! My problem is that I work from home. While it’s extremely flexible, it’s still a responsibility and very hard to make a consistent routine like you mentioned. So I spend all this time planning and may actually have very little time to execute it week to week. But I am praying to be able to quit.

SOTW is 15 minutes of prep max, mostly reserving library books. Almost open and go. Just read and enjoy! Don’t overthink it.,

[caffeineandbooks]

Your kids are already getting a day a week of activities at your enrichment program.  If you do nothing more at home than read the chapter and ask them to narrate, you're still doing a great job.  If doing more than that is life-giving for you, by all means do it, but don't view it as obligatory.  Better to do a little history that you all enjoy and look forward to, than make yourself miserable with a huge plan that doesn't fit this season of your life.

[2_girls_mommy]

Yes, if you are working, just reading the book and doing the mapwork is plenty.  Give them the coloring sheet if they like them.  My dd7 can go to Sunday school every week and do nothing but a coloring sheet there and love her teacher and her lessons week after week.  (She has a great Sunday school teacher now who does all kinds of stuff, but when they only did coloring, she loved that too. ) 

[ScoutTN]

I used to read ahead and do my library book reservations and any book buying every month or six weeks. Less administrative time and easier to keep up with that way. I’d just add the next few books to the coffee table pile each week.