Grade 6: Middle Ages

 The Song of Roland Chalkboard

The kids awoke to this new chalkboard up on the wall (back on the first day of this block in late March), and we recited several stanzas of this long, epic poem. I explained the general idea behind the poem, and we discussed whether or not it was "brave" or egotistical to hold out so long before calling for help.

I have been allowing DS11 to experiment with using a pen instead of pencils/colored pencils, which he has taken to quite well. He loves how smoothly pens glide across the paper (who doesn't?!). He joked that it is "revolutionizing" his writing. God I love this adorable boy!

                           We looked up our family crest and DS11 put it in his notebook. He and his father have plans this summer to do paper mache shields with our family crest painted upon them.

We made these catapults out of clothes pins, craft sticks, binder clips and rubber bands

We read about Eleanor of Aquitaine and watched several youtube videos documenting her life. We talked about how women were seen as property, and how important it was to nobility of that time to have a wife who can produce a male heir - which of course is what leads Eleanor to have more than one husband. 

 

(This is the inspiration piece for the fancy letter E in the above MLB page that DS 11 did for Eleanor of Aquitaine)

We learned about the types of clothing worn by both "common folk" as well as more noble folk, how important the clergy was in leadership, and the names of armor parts for an "armored knight". Average foot soldiers would have worn different armor, sometimes chainmail sleeves under leather (if they could afford it) or just leather (if they could not).

The Black Death was a bit of a scary topic for my 11 year old, but we persevered. He was shocked to learn just how many people died of this horrible plague. We looked at several examples of macabre drawings of that era before settling on the above depiction.