Castle Investigation

It all started at the beginning of the school year with our literature unit on fairy tales. One day the kids helped me think of commonalities they had noticed among fairy tales, and I just happened to record their answers on a chart shaped as a castle.  From there, several children requested help learning how to draw their own castles.  I noticed a number of kids beginning to build castles in the block area as well.  Thus, our castle investigation was born.  Well, not exactly.  Before we proceeded we delved into a few more preliminary activities to gauge interest.

We filled our bookshelf with castle related books and gave the kids time to explore and share.

We also looked closely at a variety of castles to notice and recreate their shapes.  This activity was a good tie in with our study of 3-dimensional shapes in math. 

Next, we shared all the things we thought we knew about castles...

It turned out these kids were even more knowledgeable about castles than I was...with a few misconceptions on the side, of course.

Obviously, interest (as noticed through their independent play above as well as through structured classroom activities) continued to be high, so together we began to wonder about castles.

Five over-arching interests emerged out of our wonder sharing: 

• How castles got built
• About the animals that lived in castles
• Kings and queens
• Dragons (which a number of kids had listed at the beginning of the year as what they most "hoped and dreamed" to learn about in kindergarten) 
• All about knights

Right off the bat we needed to clear up some misconceptions about castle structures from the medieval times.  It turns out they were a lot bigger and more intricate that we had imagined!

Once we had some important castle vocabulary under our belt, it was time to move on to our first inquiry - how castles got built.  It turns out the whole process took 10-20 years!  The kids divided up into "teams" to take on the various roles of castle builders so they could better understand the process.  We had stonemasons (made the stones and walls), carpenters (drawbridge), blacksmiths (portcullis), and ditch diggers (moats).

They were quite proud of their finished product.  Apparently walking on a drawbridge over a moat filled with alligators and through an iron gate is an exciting (possibly too exciting!) way to enter a kindergarten classroom.

It was time to move on to our second inquiry.  Learning about castle animals seemed like a good way to bring in a few girls who remained slightly ambivalent about castles, but who loved animals.  Through books we figured out which animals lived in castle villages and what their purposes were.  For instance, it turns out that cats were around to eat the mice, while hawks were used to help hunt (falconry).  We used real images to guide us as we drew and labeled favorite castle animals.

In order to initiate our  inquiry into kings and queens we came up with a long list of people who lived in castle villages.  We noticed castles had everyone from cooks to lords to candlemakers to knights to jewelry makers.  Jewelry making was a big interest, so we acted  like lords and ladies of the castle by adorning ourselves with jewels.  

Now, how to tackle that dragon interest??  I wasn't exactly sure where to go with this one, so I let the kids be creative.  Each kindergartener created and named their own dragon and got to tell us all about its special powers.  I noticed a lot of dragon play in our building area and got to overhear some pretty fabulous conversations as well.  The question of whether or not dragons are real was wildly discussed.  

Mrs. Lehman came to show us pictures of real castles she had visited on her trip through Europe.

My observations during choice time play helped me notice a real interest in attacking and defending castles, so learning about trebuchets seemed like a good way to go.  A You Tube reenactment of the launching of a medieval trebuchet helped us better understand the mechanics behind the medieval machine.  After filling the carpet with materials (spoons, popsicle sticks, rubberbands, puffballs, tape, blocks, and so much more), the kids got busy designing and testing out their own catapults.  The process was amazing to watch!  I was wowed by their informal conversations with each other, by the natural way they shared ideas and made suggestions, as well as by the resilience each child showed in creating, testing out, and then redesigning their catapults.  

Catapults also began popping up during choice time play, so it seemed like a fitting time to dive further into our knight inquiry.  We started out by learning about coats of armor and of course created our own.  The best part was trying to guess which coat of armor belonged to which child, similar to the way pictures/symbols helped knights identify each other in battle as well.

We experimented with note taking by watching and listening to someone's "prezi" online all about knights.  Then we recorded (through pictures and/or words) what we learned.

The best part about organizing our information on this web was discovering how helpful it could be for organizing our thoughts in other areas of the curriculum as well.  

A large majority of the kids were fascinated with the "equipment" knights used.  After reading and sharing more about their weapons and horses, I let each kid plan out a knight project.  They could use any material in our classroom to create their project.  The kids created everything from horses to lances to swords to shields to armor.  Before delving in to the creation process we discussed the knight's code of chivalry, and I was very impressed by the chivalrous behavior and self control the kids exhibited while creating and then showing off their objects.     

Prior to beginning our castle investigation, we had mapped out the cafeteria in conjunction with our cafeteria investigation.  Since then, mapping had taken off in our classroom.  During choice time, the kids were creating maps of everything from our playground to their bedrooms.  I decided to seize upon the map interest by working with the kids to make a map of the world.  We learned about the continents through a catchy jingle on You Tube, and then we figured out where in the world the castles are located on our map.

"Medieval times" was a phrase the kids were pretty familiar with by now, but I knew developmentally they couldn't quite grasp the concept of a different time period.  To make the concept a little more concrete, we wondered how today's parties are different from parties in Medieval times.  In order to learn about the differences, the kids carefully studied a photograph of a medieval party.  By now they were skilled at looking closely and noticing the details of what they saw, so the list we came up with was quite extensive.  

Thanksgiving break was approaching.  Even though the kids' interest in castles had yet to wane, I knew it was time to begin wrapping up the project.  Throughout our investigation some of the kids kept asking if we could make a "real" castle village together.  I figured the castle village would be a good way to bring all of our castle knowledge together into one spot, and I knew creating big structures was a very appealing activity for this group.  

We began by brainstorming a long list of all the parts our castle village would need in order to be realistic. Then, we broke down the tasks into smaller more manageable steps and got to work painting, creating, and labeling.  

Ah - the finished product, at last....

Each child also created a few pages pages telling about two favorite castle facts they learned during our investigation.  It was fun to see and hear what the kids remembered.   

  

The day before Thanksgiving break we took on the role of "castle experts."  Using our 3-d model and our books of facts, we taught the other kindergarten classes ALL ABOUT CASTLES.

A huge thank you goes out to Darla Myers - http://mrsmyerskindergarten.blogspot.com/ - whose castle investigation helped inspire and guide me through the process in my own classroom.


I can't wait to see what direction the kiddos will take us next....