Middle Ages RESOURCES
As we studied the Middle Ages we used Mystery of History 2* as our spine (check out What I use with Mystery of History for the additional resources I used with it). In addition there were a few other items we pulled out from time to time (I do occasionally have resources for specific time periods, and those got their own posts, that’ll be linked below).
- Conquest of Empires– can you take over the Roman empire, this would work great for the first time period I’m gonna mention and it’s one my boys regularly pull out
- Dominion– set in a vaguely middle age time, and one with lots of expansions, which we have many of, it’s pulled out on a regular basis: Full review of Dominion.
- I don’t have any other resources to recommend that fit across the entire time, Conquest of Empires is really only here out of pity. As I find more I’ll add them in.
Middle Ages LESSONS, the Roman Empire
Mystery of History 2 starts off with some church history, so I’m gonna link you over to my Acts of the Apostles page to get you started.
From there it heads over to a batch of Roman history. For that you need to read my Roman history stuff.
While all of that is going on, Saint Valentine gets some people hitched and Saint Patrick drives all of the snakes out of Ireland (or maybe not).
Now if you go with certain versions of history, this is also when King Arthur happens, and for that you need to try out:
All right, and that ends the bits that are somewhat happening, or possibly happening during the Roman Empire, so we transition into what we usually call
The Middle Ages history lessons, a bit of fun context
Before we get into actual history events, let’s look at some history lessons that give us an idea of the time period.
Let’s focus our attention on some super fun people from the Middle Ages: VIKINGS!
The tricky thing about the Vikings, there’s not a lot of famous Vikings, like I can name two, and they’re responsible for the two history lessons on specific events for this part. I tried looking for more, and mainly found some interesting mythology that gets into debates on reality.
- Leif Ericson Discovered America
- The Discovery of Iceland
- Make a Viking Spear
- Make a Viking Brooch
- Make a Viking Shield- huh, apparently I didn’t actually write this one up, head up to the knight shield, only make it round
A bit of confusion going on more or less at the same time as the Vikings in the Middle Ages
So the age of Vikings takes place over an extended period of time, hundreds of years. During that same time there’s a few other things going on.
- Charlemagne– it takes a lot of gumption to dub yourself “the great”
- The Icon Controversy, a bit of art history in the midst of all these battles
- Saint Boniface gives us a Christmas tree (you can see the dangers of the kids picking the figures for our Lego History)
- Saint Francis of Assisi
- The Battle of Hastings, or a brief comment on how ONE battle changed English history
- Marco Polo travels to China (this is an entire unit on this guy)
- Joan of Arc had a minor disagreement with England
- The Crusades- you know what’s hard to craft a good lesson for kids on? The Crusades, I never came up with a lesson I really liked, oh well, next time around
- War of the Roses– this is actually the first lesson in Mystery of History 3, but I tend to think of it as more of a middle ages time period, then a Renaissance time period.
- Guttenburg- I really need to create a great lesson on him
- How the Reformation is to Blame for the American Revolution– a tongue in cheek view of 15o years worth of history
MORE Middle Ages IDEAS
While these Middle Ages ideas can get you through a school year, we had many fails I did not post about for several of our earth science units. Besides some people have a different take on how they did the projects that might work better for you, so check out my Middle Ages Pinterest board for more ideas.
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