It is with great joy (and a little relief) that we move on from our Maths block and onto…History! We’ve picked up Story of the World 2 and have thrown ourselves headlong into the wonder of the Medieval period and we are loving it.
If you are looking for ideas on how to expand on Story of the World, I have lots of fabulous ideas and activities pinned here, we are working our way through them but I’d love to hear what you are up to as well!
After reading chapter 15 we then delved a bit deeper into the story of the Norman conquest and the most famous battle in English history, the Battle of Hastings.
First we watched an animated version of the Bayeaux tapestry, which beautifully brings to life the medieval version of the battle. For a deeper and more complex view of King Harold and the invasion, this documentary was wonderful, even helping to understand how that invasion shapes society today. Bliss.
The boys really enjoyed making their own version of the Bayeux Tapestry and I admit to adding a few soldiers in myself! We rolled out a long piece of paper on the floor to give ourselves a sense of the scale and shape of the tapestry before drawing our own battle scenes inspired by our studies.
I wasn’t sure how long the boys would enjoy this project for but they really went with it. More rolls were unfurled, crayons put to use; I was suprised by how much Huwyl’s drawing replicated what he had seen when we looked at the tapestry. I’m so enjoying sharing these stories with the boys, part of my history and part of theirs.
Ah History, we do love you.
Emmalina and Her Unfeasibly Large Bonnet 
The Battle of Hastings is the ONLY thing I remember from history class growing up. Oh, and Heinrich Schliemann. I like to use his name instead of traditional curse words.
We like to hit the major highlights in history class! Round here we say ‘holy guacamole!’ a lot because of Skippyjon Jones, he’s a story book cat who pretends to be a chihuahua. Plus ‘holy Battle of Hastings!’ is linguistically cumbersome. Although….