Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Celtic War Axes

My kids love doing crafts and experiments as a part of school. Sadly, we didn't get to very many fun projects last year. The kids, especially Mika, asked for more activities. It is my goal to add in as many projects as possible this year.

We already did one simple experiment last week showing the purpose of gastroliths. Today, we did a craft project for history.

We are using Story of the World for history. This great elementary history program comes with a storybook full of short 2-3 pages stories in roughly chronological order and an activity guide. The activity guide gives references for the popular Usborne and Kingfisher encyclopedias, review questions, narration samples, additional history reading suggestions, literature tie-in suggestions, and activity/craft ideas for each of the 42 chapters. In the back of the book, there are student pages which include maps, coloring pages, and other pages that go with some of the simple craft suggestions. We are using Volume 2: The Middle Ages this year.

We on the section chapter which tells about the Celts and Barbarians in Britain. One of the craft suggestions was to make a Celtic double blade war axe. It even includes a blade template. This craft was simple and cheap as we already had everything required, or something that could be substituted.


Here's a photo of the kids posing with their axes.

We started with the kids painting their handles. The big kids used acrylic paint. Josh used washable poster paint. Once the paint was dry, they traced their blades on cardboard. I cut the blades out with a box cutter. Then we covered the blades with aluminum foil and attached them using raffia (which subbed for twine). We stuffed the wrapping paper roll handles with newspaper to make them a bit sturdier. They're kind of cool.

BTW...I had previously posted about doing "preschool" with Josh to keep him from getting too bored and getting into things. One of the things I mentioned in that post was including him in some of our schooling...this is what I meant by that. He painted his own axe handle and now has his own axe to play with.

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1 Comments:

The Four Week Vegan said...

Awesome! My bosy like making long swords and then bring them to parkday and battle with the other boys that do the same - not that it was a school assignment.