Week Ten: Medieval Times

We are in the middle of studying the Middles Ages. :)

We had a medieval feast:
We didn't get too fancy with it. We made some stew and had some yummy bread. The kids thought that it was cool. :)

We built a castle:

Well, we started to build a castle.

I should rephrase that - my husband started to build a castle.

I was so silly and thought that we could simply open this kit and put it together within a few hours. That was not the case. At all. Unless you have a child that aspires to be a stonemason, then they might not enjoy this very much.

I'm sure that the actual building of the castle (which we will do in a couple of days) is fun.

The problem is that you have to make each itty bitty little brick. The kit comes with a mold to make the bricks. One small mold.

To make the castle pictured on the box, you have to make 22 batches of bricks.

And it takes a half hour for them to set up.

And you have to measure and mix the plaster each time.

Wow. My poor husband spent the bulk of Saturday making batches of bricks. Luckily, he was model builder and it didn't bug him too much. I would not have even attempted it without him, that's for sure.

So, my one question is why on earth didn't they include a larger mold for the bricks??? The kit was over $20 and all it included were some plastic knights, the brick mold, plaster mix, glue, and few little things (a door, brush, etc.) I think the box probably cost them more than the contents.

In case you didn't notice, I don't really recommend this kit. We will persevere and build something though. We don't have quite enough bricks for the castle shown on the box, but we will design our own. :)
We played Medieval Games on the Wii:


The kids have had fun jousting, shooting arrows, and racing horses - among other things. My husband and I even tried it out the other night. It has some annoying parts to it - like the fact that you have to have 4 players each round you play (which means you'll be playing against the computer quite often - and they are sharpshooters).

This next week we're talking about William Tell, and also Jewish people in the Middle Ages.