Week 12 - History
On Tuesday we had our living history day - dressing up, cooking food and playing games from 500 years ago. The children all looked brilliant in their costumes. We had lots of knights and princess, some servants from a castle and even four dragons!
We were very fortunate to have Juliet and Hal with us who both spend time at Tudor re-enactments helping with the cooking and entertainment for our day.
The morning was spent preparing food for our feast. The children all had a go at helping to make pottage, a vegetable stew which was part of the staple diet in medieval times. They also made some flat breads, butter and raspberry moyce - a cream and fruit dessert. We also had some sugar fondant for the children to make 'subtleties' or decorations which would have been placed on the table for decoration. It was hard work chopping all the vegetables, kneading the dough and whipping the cream....... I think we were all glad we were cooking for 30 not the 400 who might have lived in an castle!
In the afternoon Juliet set up games for us including lucky pig, nims and 3 mens morris which the children learnt to play. Games of both luck and strategy. Whilst some children were doing that others were with a Tudor musician, Hal, who had bought his wooden pipe and hurdy gurdy to play live music and teach us some dances. We also got a chance to try all the delicious food that we had made in the morning. Pottage was surprisingly popular!
'I liked making a flower in the sugar subtleties and the raspberry moyce.'
'I liked playing in our outfits. I was dressed as a knight.'
'Making pottage was good because we got to eat it, but I didn't like it!'
'I really liked eating the pottage, I had 5 bowlfulls!'
'I liked making the butter because I liked seeing it change from a liquid into a solid.'
'I liked playing the games especially nims.'
'Making the bread was good because it was fun and it was really good to learn so we can do it at home.'
'Music and dancing was good because Hal was very good at the hurdy gurdy and I really enjoyed dancing to it.'
'The pottage was delicious.'
'Listening to the hurdy gurdy was good because it sounded really weird.'
I would like to say a massive thank you to Juliet and Hal for helping out with our day. I know the children all had a great time and have learnt even more about life 500 years ago. Thank you also to parents for kitting your children out in some great costumes. Fortunately none of the dragons ate any knights and no princess was required to rescue a dragon!
