HIT: Medieval ideas and resources

[Molly Clark <mcclark@TWCNY.RR.COM>]

Hello,

This is my first attempt at a hit, so please let me know if I did it wrong.
I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of responses I've gotten in
less than 24 hours!  I'll post another if I get a lot more responses.
Thanks to all who sent ideas - my librarian is quite impressed!  I also had
a couple requests for a HIT, so here goes....

Try talking the the folks that play Dungeons and Dragons, they have all
kinds of medieval props(swords, armor, costumes, etc.)

Have you tried the PastPort units from Demco.  They cost 79.95 and the
teachers really raze about them.  They are on many different subjects.

do a search for renaissance and renaissance fairs...there are a lot of
people
who are really into this stuff and there is info, photos etc..  Try the
novel"
A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver" by E.L. Konigsburg...awesome
historical fiction with a lot of  good factual stuff about the era.

My son has a book called "Castles" from the little library series published
by Kingfisher Books.  It has a whole section on building little catapults,
knight's helmets, castle floor plans, etc..  It's a very small book geared
to
ages 6 to 9 but the information is great!  Author is Christopher Maynard

Here are some sites:
http://www.baxter.net/edunet/medlt.html
http://members.aol.com/donnandlee/index.html#GREECE
http://www.cln.org/themes/medieval.html

A book about medieval life which is very good is The World of the
Medieval Knight by Christopher Gravett, published by Peter Bedrick Books.  I
had been hearing wonderful things about it and finally bought it this past
winter.  It has lots of detail, both in information and illustration and is
really beautiful.  Our sixth graders do a medieval study too and
illustration is what they want most.  They have a medieval banquet, for
which they create lots of props.


   http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/labyrinth-home.html
http://www.elore.com/elore04.html
http://rodent.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/cphome.stm
http://rodent.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/mainmenu.htm
http://fox.nstn.ca/~tmonk/castle/castle.html
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/medweb/links.htm#index
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook3.html
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html
http://www.microfusion.com.au/links/midages.htm
http://www.s-hamilton.k12.ia.us/antiqua/instrumt.html
http://frenchculture.miningco.com/msub1.htm
http://goireland.miningco.com/msub28.htm
http://gogermany.miningco.com/msub9.htm
http://historymedren.miningco.com/msubcasl.htm
http://www.homeworkcentral.com/files.htp?fileid=101859&use=hc
http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/labyrinth-home.html
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/music_and_dance.html
http://www.renstore.com/plaza/hotfairs.shtml
http://www.tyler.net/ruskhslib/worldhis.htm#Medieval
http://www.spu.edu/~kst/bib/bib.html
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/1265/calcohol.html
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/food.html
http://users.aol.com/gerekr/costume.html
http://users.aol.com/nebula5/tcpinfo2.html#history-eliz
http://www.n-polk.k12.ia.us/Pages/Departments/media/middle.html
http://www.byu.edu/ipt/projects/middleages/

I am at home on spring break and can not remember the books we
have used for our medieval unit-the teachers seem to vary the activities
each year. Several years ago, our sixth grade classes put on a medieval
fair for the other sixth graders to visit.  Each group had different
aspects of medieval life as you suggested. One group featured food, another
put on a knighting ceremony, and I think there were also jobs involved (ex.
a monk would explain how they wrote books, etc....) There are many trade
books on medieval life and you may also want to try a teacher supply store
for workbooks of ideas.

The PastPorts series of teacher resource binders by Demco are great.
There is one for Medieval England.  They are very expensive, so if you
don't have funding, you might try to borrow one.  The binder is an
entire curriculum based on this particular time period.

Molly, you might look at "Castle" by David Maaacauley. There is avillage
build next to the castle.

My wife and I are going to a medieval style wedding soon, and my
daughter and a friend will be minstrels for it. In an effort to find
information we used the Society for Creative Anacronism site
www.sca.org and found heaps of stuff.

I highly recommend The Middle Ages a four-volume set published by Charles
Scribner's Sons.  We used it all the time with 7th graders- and are using it
now with 9th graders as well.  The format is well laid out, entries are
alphabetical and the kids all told me that these were the BEST books.  I'm
sorry, I can't remember how much they are - but if you have the budget for
them - go for it!

check out the sources listed at:
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/searchindex?query=history+medieval&searc
htype=subjects

A teacher and I built a castle (with student help) from appliance boxes.
The refrigerator boxes were tall enough for the kids to stand and move
through.  We used 4 to make the corners and put  large pieces of cardboard
from appliance boxes as the connecting pieces.  We used about 10 cans of
gray spray paint then drew stones with markers over the painted areas.
Scott and I had a ball and the kids did too,  I brought one tower to the LRC
and used it in a corner for a few weeks just for fun.
I called several appliance stores and used my husband's truck to go pick up
the boxes

I have little experience with elementary students, but there is a site I
feel would be useful.  It is called The Annenberg/CPB Project: Exhibits
Collection and is found at   http://www.learner.org/exhibits
Click on Middle Ages from the sites given on the right side. Many aspects
of medieval life are discussed and interactive activities are provided. The
section on Homes would be useful for the recreated village as well as
Clothing, Town Life, and Related Resources.
Under Homes and specifically Homes of the Wealthy a related site is given
called Wharram Percy. That is an archeological site in England and the
descriptions of the town as well as drawings and pictures are most
interesting.

A great pictorial medieval book is Aliki's -- A Medieval Feast.  The
costumes, rooms, and everything about the illustrations are 100% accurate.
We used the book in a high school to pattern costumes and so forth for a
Madrigal dinner and chorus performance.  Very successful.  It's the only
picture filled book that I know.

I haven't done this before so I cannot speak from experience but I am going
to have one hour per week to do library work with the students. I am going
to have a theme of a wedding between maybe the princess and a knight, I was
going to have a festival of some description. I chose a wedding because  the
location would be the castle and there would be the religious aspect and the
jewelry.
I am going to brainstorm all the requirements of a wedding. Hopefully we
will come up with food, clothing, location, furniture etc.
As we have a thread of technology running through all our work we will need
to find out our the food is cooked, preserved, what the serving bowls are
made of etc.
For clothing: how the material is made, where is comes from, the dyes used.
I also want to do something on jewelry and make-up. Also what the servants
would be wearing.
Also how do people get invited, they will need to find out about printing
and the town crier.
Of course, the castle is all technology.
There is a Web site that talks about the students being apprentices, I like
this idea and might run with it. I will have groups of 4 students and each
group takes up a major area and one student will take up a specific research
task within this.
We are on holiday at the moment so I only have one Web site at home it is
http://www.execpc.com/~clisto/clisto.HTML


Molly Clark
MLS Student - Syracuse University
Library Clerk - Minetto Elementary School, Oswego NY
e-mail mcclark@twcny.rr.com

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