Today we learnt about medieval Knights and Kings! We started by dressing up, Noah was a King but kept referring to himself as the ‘Princess Knight’ and Tommy dressed up as a Knight.
The boys began by designing their own family crest. Coats of arms were granted to nobles by monarchs and originally were designs on Knights shields. As time went on coats of arms were commonly passed down through the generations of a family and became known as family crests and decorated flags and banners, they are still used today. I made this template and printed it off for them to use.
In this instance King Noah allowed Knight Tommy to design his own.
Next the boys designed their own shields, they would have used these to protect themselves when they fought in battle. They picked what colour card they wanted their shields to be and then used more card to decorate. Noah opted for Green and Tommy for Red.
I cut A4 sized card into the shapes of shields (I bent them in half long ways without making a crease and cut round one end), I then cut out shapes in the yellow card for the boys to stick down. We spoke about how Kings and Knights used to fight and the boys got their rocking horse out and they practiced riding into battle.
We also thought about what Kings and Knights done for fun, we found out they used to play cards, board games like chess and checkers, they also loved to listen to music and dance. Noah and Tommy wanted to do some dancing as well, but unfortunately for me they picked baby shark as their choice of music.
In medieval times the wealthy also loved to throw banquets and feast so we decided to make some medieval food. By this time Tommy was pretty worn out and fell asleep, perhaps the King needs to employ a different Knight.
With Tommy asleep the King was left to make the food himself, this definitely would have been the servants job in medieval times but King Noah’s pretty laid back. With lent approaching I thought we would take this opportunity to learn a little bit about other fasting religious holidays, Ember days (or Ymber days). We also made an Ember day tart. If you click on the link you’ll find the recipe we used.
We used the Royal Pie Crust recipe but instead of making one big one we made individual ones in a cupcake tin. Therefore for the filling we quatred the recipe. We didn’t add the powdered douce, instead we added a small pinch of ginger and cinnamon. We also added the left over egg whites from the yolks used in the pastry to bulk it out a little, and we used raisins instead of currants.
They were a bit odd I’ll admit but the boys loved them. Ember days are a series of days set aside for fasting and prayer, the tarts were traditionally served in medieval times whilst meat was forbidden as they were filling. You can learn more about it here.
The boys have had great fun dressing up and pretending to be Kings and Knights, as well as getting creative and tasting some new food. Why don’t you try it too?
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