In this unit, we need to study the general historical principles of the society at this time. We need to look at basics such as:

- food

- clothing

- religion

- shelter

- transportation

- government

- societal structure

- land ownership and cooperation

We have quite a lot of freedom in how this unit is structured and in much of our overall learning.

So....

What are you interested in? What would you like to learn about this time of knights, lords, and ladies? What kinds of projects are you interested in and what do we need to take a look at? Do you have any games, websites, movies, and books that we need to see?

What do you want to know......?

Assignment / Project Ideas

- Making scale buildings of the Middle Ages

- Preparing a meal

- A blog written as if the blogger were a feudal peasant, describing a typical day for the lord of the manor.

- Write and perform a play on what things might have been like

- Make a little model of what it would look like back then.

- Build something that would have been there long ago.

- Write a essay on how life was back then.

- Make a diary on a peasants daily life

- Make a mural

- Interview someone from that time

- Make a timeline

- Build a village

- Build catapults

- Act as if we lived in that time for a school day

- Make clothing

- Make dioramas

- Make a board game

- Make a book or dictionary

- Make a video

- Make a Website

Things I'd Like to Know / Questions I Have

When was Feudal Europe in its most powerful position?

What types of food or meals did people in Feudal Europe eat?

What did their clothing look like?

Did they farm?

Were they separted at high and low class?

Did they eat a lot of meat? What kinds of meat did they eat?

Could kings have more then one wife?

Were the kings more powerful then the queens?

Who was the first king of this age?

Did every king have a jester?

What did they use for warfare?

What did they grow for crops?

Which king was the most powerful?

Could kings have more then one slave?

Did they vote for a ruler?

Were kings directly in charge of their wars?

How did they make money?

How long could wars last?

How many soldiers could be involved in an army?

How important were women in FE? Had the a patriarchal church seized control by now?

What else are we studying this year? Is there a way to connect this unit to others to make it easy to see the big ideas?

Resources

http://www.learner.org/exhibits/middleages/feudal.html

http://www.themiddleages.net/

http://mw.mcmaster.ca/intro.html

http://www.xtec.es/crle/02/middle_ages/alumne/prologue/punt2/index.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_(feudal_Europe)

http://www.quia.com/jg/641498.html

http://www.eduplace.com/ss/hmss/7/unit/act5.2.html

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/60/index-ba.html

http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/medieval/index.htm

http://www.middle-ages.org.uk

http://library.thinkquest.org/6105/index.html

This is an excellent site to go to for information on anything from Medieval Warfare to Medieval Religion.

http://www.activehistory.com.uk/top_activities/index.htm

This is a UK site with lots of interactive games. Look in Year 7 (ages 11 - 12) for medieval Europe.

Individual Project Ideas

What topic are you interested in? What do you think you want to learn about? What form of representation are you going to use? (Video, meal, essay, diorama, fiction, etc.)

Leave your idea and don't forget to put your name!

- Food: Cook a meal, write an essay on what they eat, what was some common foods, find some recipes (Ashley H.)

- Castles: how they attack and defend, what they eat, how they made castles, model, (Randy)

- Clothing: what they wear, who invented clothing, Kind of made a design of clothing, what they made it out of (Ashley.M)

- Weapons of the Middle Ages: The weapons of the middle ages fascinate me. For example, the mace and broadsword are some of my personal favourites.... I would like to know how the battles of the middle ages were fought and won. For the thing that I am going to be doing, I might write a paper up on the different types of weapons and make some life sized drawings of weapons. (Darren)

- Knights: Make a board game on how to become a knight, write rules for the game, make a power point presentation on knights. (Derek)

- I would like to do town life, to do town life I would make a model of a town in the middle ages and write a presentation to go with it. (Kate.H)

- I would like to do Entertainment from the Middle Ages. I would like to know and would write an essay about what kinds of entertainment there was and who created such fun and exciting pass times also make dioramas of three favorite pass times from the middle ages (Tyler.B)

- Housing: I would like to make a model of a Home in the medieval times, and make a booklet explaining about my model (Toni)

- Religion/Government: I'm going to look at religion in the Middle Ages - the role of priests, nuns, the influence the Catholic Church had on Feudal Europe, etc. I included government because religion and government were interconnected in these times. I'm doing a slideshow presentation and an essay. (April)

- Life for woman and children in the middle ages: I am going to write and essay on the topic and then I am going to make a blog and put entries in about that topic. (Katie)

- Witchcraft. I'll make a website on witchcraft. (Shyla)

- Middle Age Myths: For my project I will be making four sculptures of well known myth creatures and do a write up on each one of them. (Elaine)

- Vikings I want to learn about how they would kill, eat, and travel. I will make a Viking sword. (Matthew)

- I would like to do a blog on how feudal peasants lived on a typical day. I would like to find out what types of food they ate, what they wore, and if and what types of jewellery they had. I would also like to write an essay with all of the information that I collect from my blog. (Anna)

- Slaves! I am going to find information on slaves in the middle ages. I will do a blog that has pictures and text of a woman slaves typical day of working, and how she lived. It will have at least 20 blog entries. I will also make information and an activity booklet. I will write some information on slaves and what they did, how they dressed etc, and give some activities with it like a word search on slaves, and a colouring page or two etc. (Hillary)

- The lords and powerful nobles, why were they so powerful and if the had ever been beaten in a war, I would time line and an essay. (Mike)

- Soldiers: make a battlefield out of a cardboard box and put an army of soldiers attacking a castle. (Dustin)