Preschool Day Medieval Theme

I am always looking for new activities to do with the kids- to give them exposure to new things, cultures, places, and people. We not only have great discussions about a wider variety of subjects, it also gives the kids an opportunity to learn to behave in more diverse situations. Plus, it is FUN!!!!

OUTING: This weekend, we dressed up and went to the Renaissance Faire here in Utah (in the USA), starting with a jousting tournament. While we were there, we talked all about knights, horses, jousting, kings, and other such things. Chelsea was very lucky and received a rose from the 10 time world champion knight! We watched him win the jousting tournament!

ART: Before we left, we packed our banquets/ feasts in paper bags (gotta get in those new vocabulary terms!), but what better way to practice that pincer grasp than to peel off knight stickers and put them on our lunch bags??

SONG: I changed up "If you're happy and you know it" to "If you're a knight and you know it!" It went:

If you're a knight and you know it, clap your hands! *clap clap*
If you're a knight and you know it, clap your hands! *clap clap*
If you're a knight and you know it, then you'll fight with all your might-
If you're a knight and you know it, clap your hands! *clap clap*

(We also did "draw your sword" and "mount your horse", things like that. I just started with "clap your hands" so that they knew the tune)

Here is a link to a video of the song if you don't know the tune.

BOOKS: We love the "Knight and the Dragon" book by Tomie dePaola! It is super cute and hilarious! An easy read for short attention spans! Because my son is also super into knights and fighting, we also haunted our local library and checked out books on how armor was made, lifestyles of knights in medieval Europe, etc. Just base your learning on where your child is at!

OT: I found this puzzle about a year ago, and love it! It is certainly difficult (I won't say how long it took me to figure out that dragon!), but so fun to do, and great for rotating hands! Chelsea can do some of the pieces now, just because we did the puzzle so many times and she knows how to do some of the knight and dog.

GAMES: We did two games for this learning weekend! The first one was "Sir Gaston says" or "Lady Chelsea says", just like Simon Says, but with a medieval twist! The other was pretending to be a knight while riding on the Mommy horse. During this game, I would try to sway and rock a lot, to get Chelsea to really work hard on her core strength. See, you can sneak therapy into ANYTHING!!! I looked ridiculous though, so here is a picture of Chelsea with a different knight instead!

SPEECH: For speech, we worked on prepositions! We used Chelsea's princess castle and my son's action figure knights to work on things like "Put the knight behind the castle" or "Put the knight on top of the castle". We worked on in, out, top, next to, behind, and around. The picture below isn't mine.

 

Happy learning!!!! Preschoolers are SOOOO much fun!!!