A Kindergarten Unit on Castles3 Feb, 2016. 2 Comments. A Day In First Grade, Kindergarten, Kindergarten Science, Kindergarten Social Studies. Posted By: Kristen Smith
The past three weeks we have been learning all about Medieval Times in our kindergarten classroom. My students had shown a huge interest in building castles and asked a lot of great questions about them in the weeks prior and thus birthed our newest unit.
We began learning about medieval times by reading the book, “A Medieval Feast.”
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This was the perfect book for my group of young learners. They have a passion for cooking and tactile activities and therefore, this book answered many of their first questions about castles and they loved every minute of the story. After reading the book and talking about the story, we watched a part of this video.
This lead to a wonderful conversation about Medieval foods and times. During exploration centers that day, my students prepared food for our “king” and used many of our new vocabulary words! It was great to see what my students had just learned in their play that day.
(Our fearless king! Costume from Bella Luna Toys)
The next day, we dug a little deeper into our inquiry and read about the different parts of a castle. I drew one and we practice labeling it during our morning meeting.
During guided reading, we practiced syllables using our new vocabulary words.
We then read a brief passage about the different parts of a castle.
During writing that day, we worked on a castle “can, have, are.”
Next, the REAL fun began! I had been saving giant boxes and this presented a fabulous opportunity to repurpose them. My class decided that they would love to build a castle that they could play in. To come up with a plan, we read a page in our “Knights and Castles” book that taught us about the people who worked on a castle. I wrote each job on an anchor chart (masons, blacksmiths, carpenters, and ditch diggers) and my students got to choose which job they would like in our castle construction. (It worked out perfectly and each job had students who wanted to complete that task! I could not have planned it better.) Then each group took out tools and books to research and plan how they would complete their task in our castle project.
The masons took out the blocks to plan what shape the castle should be and what features we should add to it.
The ditch diggers got out some of our books and started to draw out their plan.
My drawbridge team took out our castle blocks to document how they wanted the drawbridge to look.
After our planning time, each group shared their ideas and were beyond excited to begin construction the next day. (Truth be told, I barely slept that night because I was so excited as well!!)
The next day, we began construction and painting. I set out a paint table with mixing bowls, paint brushes, and paint. My students mixed all of their own paint colors. Each group referred to their plans, our pictures, and resources to create the “perfect” color for their job.
I also set out our resources so that students could easily access them during the process.
Each team carefully worked on their part of the castle.
Students worked very carefully and diligently on their tasks and took such pride in their work.
The next day, my students worked on adding the “stones” to the castle walls. To achieve this, they mixed a lighter shade of gray and used large sponges.
Since our castle was almost finished, my students wanted to know how we would defend it! Again, we referred back to our “Knights and Castles” book to read about defending a castle. My students LOVED this. So much so, that as a STEM challenge, I gave them paint stirrers, rubber bands, and wool balls and had them attempt to make catapults!
(This was a HUGE hit!)
After they launched their wool balls, they measured how far they traveled with unifix cubes and wrote their name and their farthest distance achieved on the board.
Yes, I had wool balls flying everywhere in my classroom, but the excitement, math talk, and strategizing was wonderful! I loved how my students worked together to twist the rubber bands, and came up with different designs using wooden blocks.
After this experiment, my students were very confident that they could ward off an invasion! ?
The next day we read the book, “The Making Of A Knight.” Boy did this book captivate my young learners. They hung onto every single word and wanted to become pages, squires, and knights so badly. To make this come to life for my students, we learned about a coat of arms and created them out of cardboard, paint, and sharpies.
They also designed cardboard swords.
While this center was open, other students were creating tapestries at our weaving station.
Grinding spices for the king.
And turning their ground spices into “pies” for the king.
Other students worked hard at creating a castle out of Trio blocks.
While others got to play in our castle!
“Lower the drawbridge, I’m crossing the moat!”
“We are knights! We are defending the castle!”
Having fun with a quick photo opt. (I wish I had a better angle to take the picture!!)
To say we loved our castle unit, is an understatement! We had an absolute blast!
If you would like to teach any of these lessons, they are all available in my Castle unit along with so much more! You can find it in my TpT store HERE.