Medieval Feast

For our homeschool, we use a curriculum called The Four Year Plan. Basically we rotate through different subjects every year and repeat the cycle every four years. Last year we did Ancient History, Chemistry, & English Fundamentals. We had tons of fun and many great get togethers with other families who are studying the same things. The last great party was to be a Medieval Feast, but life got in the way and the Feast was postponed from May to August, then from August to September. We were finally able to have it last Friday night. We had A BLAST!!!

We ate beef stew on trenchers (trenchers are basically bread plates, in the middle ages the people didn't have real plates, so they made flat bread and ate their stew on it with their fingers). We tried to be a little more civilized and we used plates to put our trenchers and stew on & plastic ware instead of our fingers. We made shields and swords when we learned about this last year, so the kids had sword fighting tournaments. We also did arm wrestling, danced around the Maypole and had an epic battle playing "Capture the Flag" with the swords and shields.

Here are the kids dancing around the Maypole. I was feeding Garrett, so my friend, Kelley, helped Kensi when it was her turn. (Marshyl was out of town on business, so he wasn't here with us.) It is tricky making sure you stay in line to make the ribbons line up in a beautiful pattern. And once you are wound up, it is even trickier doing it backwards to unwind!

This is probably the biggest game ever of "Ring around the Rosies". "Ring around the Rosies" is a song about the plague, or Black Death that ran through Europe in the Middle Ages.
The kids finally agreed to put their swords down long enough to play. Look at all of those shields and swords on the ground.

Here are the boys with their battle gear. Nic thought that he was a good enough swordsman that he didn't need his shield. He was right!

Here they are preparing for the battle. You can see one of the flags there in the middle. Kaiden is in the red shirt on the left, Nic is right next to him in the blue shirt. Luke is in the middle with the orange shield.

Here are the little guys planning out their strategy. Luke is in the middle in the dark blue shirt.

Kaiden, doing what he LOVES to do...sword fighting. Nic is right beside him on the right. We all had such a great time. It was well worth the wait!


BTW...if you are wondering why all of my kids are dressed alike it is because we had co-op earlier in the day at our local charter school and jeans and either a red, white, or blue polo shirt are the kids "school uniforms".