growing with You: Knights

During the past 2 weeks we have been exploring the world of knights. We have loved it !! We used the following few books to base our explorations on:

In the Castle - Anna Milbourne

This book follows a young boy who longs to be a knight and live in a castle.

The Bravest Knight - Mercer Meyer

A young boy who wished that he lived a thousand years ago and was a squire serving the bravest knight in the kingdom. He rescues fair ladies, fights evil dragons and has a face-off with a giant troll.

The Knight and the Dragon - Tomie de Paola

A delightful story about a bumbling knight and a clumsy dragon who research how to fight each other. In the midst of their dual they discover an exciting opportunity in which they can partner together.

The sword in the stone

This book follows young Wart's adventures as Merlin guides him to not only be brave but to "think" too.

A Year in a Castle - Rachel Coombs

This is a story about a year in the castle. All the pictures have a cut-away view of the castle and you can see what happens in the castle throughout the months of the year. On each page there are the same characters and it is fun to spot them. The most noted in our experience were the thief, the prisoner and the cat and dog.

Some of the things that we did included the following:

Doing mazes from Busy Bee Kids Printables. The knight had to find his way through the maze to reach the dragon and the princess locked in the tower. We printed the maze and put it in a plastic file-folder and used a dry-erase marker. This meant that the knight could go on his quest daily.

We printed the "Knights and Castles" preschool pack from Homeschool Creations. These printables included included:

tracing
identifying initial sounds
matching rhyming words,
reading a short story
matching words with pictures
making popsicle stick puppets of knights, a princess in a tower and a horse
coloring shields
basic counting

Joshua identifying the initial sounds of words

Matching vocabulary pictures

Doing a counting activity

Jed doing a pre-writing activity

Making popsicle stick puppets

Going on a quest to find a treat. I wrote down ten clues for the boys to follow which led them through a search of the house until they found a treat for for knights - some frozen juice popsicles. Some examples of the clues were as follows:

Look in the bathtub and find a treasure chest.
Take 2 of the golden coins from the treasure and give to the monkey in the shower.
Look in the fridge for the magical ketchup for your next clue.
Rescue the princess from the top of the fridge for your next clue.

Joshua all ready for his quest

The clues for the quest

Looking in the fridge for the magical ketchup

Heading upstairs for their last clue.

Making a catapult from Busy Bee Kids Crafts. You just needed popsicle sticks, 2 pegs, an elastic and a plastic spoon. It was fun and easy to make. The kids enjoyed shooting pom-poms and dried beans.

Making a castle from a cardboard box, with a drawbridge.

Making knight helmets from Play at Powerhouse. It took a lot of cutting - first the template then the helmet, but it was worth it.

Joshua with his knight helmet

Using knight activities from Homeschool Share. We did not make lap books from the materials but put magnets at the back of labels for armor and the time-line of knights so that the activity could be done again and again. Jed especially loved doing this.