KS1 Life in a Castle
This display is based on castles and castle life. With the basic premise being that we need to hire some staff to come and work in the Castle. The children can learn about arms & armour, food, medicine and clothing. The display is designed to be very hands on so that every child will have a go at all the activities.
Age group: Keystage One, 5 - 7 year olds
Display time: 1 hour 10 minutes (can be adjusted slightly to suit)
Max number of students: 24
Number of displays per school day: 3 maximum (4 if hall not used for lunch.)
Display area: School hall, dining room, gym or other large indoor space. Display items can be moved to the side during lunchtime if required.
Teacher requirement: 3 adults one of whom must be a teacher. Teaching assistants are great. But the more the merrier! Parents are also welcomed.
This display looks at 4 main topics, food & cooking, medicine, arms & armour and medieval clothes.
Introduction: We introduce ourselves to the children and explain that we need to employ some people to come and work in our castle. We need knights, millers, kitchen hands, physicians (doctors) and of course the students are all very strangely dressed so we'll need to show them what they'd have to wear as medieval people. The children are then split into 3 groups.
Clothing: The children learn what medieval clothes were made from by feeling & examining the different materials such as silk and wool. There are many lovely child sized clothes, shoes, hats and pouches for them to try on over their uniforms.
Arms & Armour: Our knight will show the children why armour was worn and where it was worn. They are then invited to try on the pieces of armour and see if they can figure out how to put the knight back together. If they have been good they are also given the opportunity to hold a real knights sword (blunt edge practice sword). The trying on of armour and sword holding are carefully supervised.
Medieval Medicine: Our young trainee physicians will need to diagnose what is wrong with their patients by looking at the colour of their urine ( apple juice or tea used etc) as a medieval doctor would tell what was wrong with a patient by looking at the colour, smelling it and even tasting it!
The children are shown a simplified urine chart and will diagnose from the wee what might be wrong with their patient. Once this is done they will make up a medicine to cure their various patients made of simple kitchen herbs. Time permitting we will also look at live leeches used for bloodletting and tooth pullers (with real teeth!).
Kitchen hands : The cook needs some help in the kitchen so we will need some people to help her do some jobs. Students then learn how people cooked and made food in medieval times and compare it to how they cook and prepare food now. Students can all make flour on the quern, make real butter in the churns (we have 3 churns) and pretend to cook the fabulous fake food over a pretend fire. Teachers may keep some flour to display in the classroom if they wish as students are often very proud of their work but it is not for consumption. It's all about learning through playing!
This display is a little messy but aprons are provided for this purpose and we will clean up afterwards!
Summary: For the last few minutes we bring the children back to sit in one group and thank them for helping us and find out what tasks they've enjoyed doing the most and which jobs they might like to do. Everyone gets a chance to examine the butter and flour that they've made together.