Knightly Fun; Higgins Armory Museums Homeschool Day

We headed out to Higgins Armory Museum today.  We've been there once before and it's a great museum.  It looks like a huge castle from the outside.  It's painted silver and just gleams in the sunlight.  It's filled with suits of armor, shields, weapons, and flags.

They were having a homeschool day today and admission was discounted.  The boys couldn't wait to head out!  We had known that this particular museum was shutting down at the end of the year and we really wanted to go at least one more time before that happened.

We were surprised to find it packed today-- mostly with homeschoolers!

We played chess, watched a demonstration on chain mail & armor,  built several castles, and just walked around for hours reading about and admiring all the old weapons.

Playing chess

building castles 

Teaming up with other homeschoolers to build huge castles

Like these!

We listened to a wonderful story being told about princes, princesses and a dragon that the kids got to all participate in.

The classroom where they had the shield making activity was fabulous.

They set up simple instructions and a bulletin board explaining all the colors, symbols and meanings behind the different shield.  They had tons of stencils all tucked into little shoe organizers for all the different shapes to put on the shields along with the name and meaning of them written on each stencil! 

A bulletin board of how to make shields and choose colors and adornments

He is obsessed with Griffins and so that's what he chose
(red means courage so he had to have red)

Evan worked hard at tracing

Ian and Alec worked hard tracing several shapes

Ian's favorite color is red so he used that along with
a griffin, owl, falcon and arrow

Yellow for generosity since he's always giving hugs
and all the animals he could find-- griffin, dragon, owl,
fox and falcon

Evan was thrilled to see Samurai costumes, helmets and weapons.  Ian watched a movie clip about the Viking and their fighting techniques.  

with hat and swords

Samurai suit

checking out the different weapons and figuring out how they worked

Evan was particularly interested in the mace

We learned about armor and even got to try a few pieces on.


A wonderful diagram of all the parts of the suit

Trying out the "hinges" on the armor

Getting to see first hand how heavy chest armor was

Trying on helmets to see how heavy they are and difficult
to see out of

Evan lifts up weapons to see how heavy they are

Evan inspects the joints and how they hinge and move

Helmets are very hard to see out of sometimes. 

Trying to use a crossbow

Using magnetic pieces to "dress" a knight

The kids were taken with the dog and horse armor

It was such a wonderful day learning all about history!        

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