Exploring the Middle Ages Class Summary 1/5/15

with Kim Rodgers

The Vikings!

We began class as we always do, going over the notebooking and mapping activities. I was reminded once again how great it is when the kids read what they wrote about our discussion from our last lesson. By the time the last student shares we have covered a lot of the details we discussed during our last class. They remember so much!

We moved onto the Vikings. This is an exciting time during history and the kids were eager to hear about Eric the Red and his son Leif Ericsson. But before they appeared in the timeline we learned about how the barbarians from the North kept invading the Frankish Kingdoms and became a thorn in the side of the three kings of the day. The western kingdom became so fed up that they eventually just gave a piece of land to these Norsemen (North-men) and called it Northmen’s Land, which eventually became Normandy. These Vikings did the same thing the barbarians from long ago did. They adopted the Franks way of life and became more settled, speaking and dressing as the French. This is when Eric appeared on the scene, fleeing his homeland when a quarrel with a neighbor ended with two men dead. Leaving Iceland, he set off looking for a brand new land and landed on the shores of a bleak, lonely place full of ice, where the sun never set in the summer and never rose in the winter. He named this place Greenland, hoping it would entice some of his countrymen to join them in this new homeland. It worked, and many families came to help settle the land, but found it very difficult to survive the lack of opportunity to grow food and provide for their families.

Eric’s son, Leif, decided he wanted to find a better place to live. Following in the footsteps of an explorer he knew, he sailed west across icy waters in an open boat. They finally landed on ground that contained grass and trees, with grapes growing wild! They picked as many as they could to take back home with them and named that place Vineland, the Land of the Grapes. Later other Greenlanders followed in Leif’s footsteps, but when they landed they were greeted by native tribes ready to defend their land, using battle cries to scare off the invaders. Historians believe they actually found North America, and that the native tribes were actually Native Americans!

Ship Builders

After finishing our reading we began work on our Viking ships, which will take us two class periods to finish. We pinky-promised that we would be patient and take our time as this was a big project we were tackling. I am including some photos so you can see our progress. They did a great job staying focused and doing their best to slow down and enjoy the process. Looking forward to seeing what they’ll look like when they’re done!