Arms & Armor Wrap-Up

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The end of the semester at Friday Co-op came and went, and I neglected to fill you in on the last several classes. So here goes ...

The final week:

We studied the Mongols, and the kids had a great time making swords.

Mongol swords (think Genghis Khan), as close to the real thing as possible

(at least with my limited imagination and budget).

The boys took great pride in their weapons.

Amazing what you can do with cardboard, paint sticks, and duct tape.

There were only a few casualties.

The week before it was Australia, complete with boomerangs and aboriginal dot art.

It's all in the details.

Careful! Some boomerangs will pinch off a nose if not caught at the precisely right moment!

Whadya know! They actually flew! Who woulda thunk it?

Not only did they fly, they came back! Wonder of wonders!

The week before that we studied the Plains Indians of North America, and we made coup sticks and atlatls. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera, so I didn't get any great shots of the kids working on their sticks or their weapons. You'll have to take my word for it that the atlatls shot their darts fantastically long distances and perfectly on target. (Cough.)

Actually, it's probably best that I didn't have my camera for that effort. But you do have my word that many, many harmless coups were made with the coup sticks, and no scalps were taken. At least no parents complained.

At least not to my face.

This is my attempt, and I only got a bit of help from the cat. I promise.

My heartfelt thanks to all the parents who entrusted me with the safety and education of their boys this semester! I thoroughly enjoyed the class.

Just not the night before.

When I was up at 3:00 cutting fabric, getting burned with hot glue, and slicing my fingers with exacto knives. But it was worth it.

Um, next semester I'm offering a word roots class.

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If you liked this post, you might like Zulu Warriors Right Here in Texas.

Zulu Warriors Right Here in Texas

My own Zulu impi warrior.

Last Friday I decided to take the boys in my co-op class all the way down to South Africa. We talked a bit about the Zulu's history and culture before jumping into our project. (Just a tiny bit, though, as the boys were eager to get to the weaponry.)

I had a bit of a different project in mind for this week ... one that included a shield as well as a spear and club - the whole package, as it were. The process wasn't quite what they were expecting, because the kids were able to do virtually all of the project themselves, so they were happily occupied weaving and gluing. All too frequently, they end up watching (and thus getting distracted) while the adults do the hands-on work after they ask for help out of frustration. This week, though, they seemed to be especially pleased by their creations, knowing that they'd done most of the work themselves.

And they didn't even have to bury them for two days under manure and pound them with stones.

This is what they were supposed to look like.

(Photo from Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford)

We started with tracing ...

And cutting ...

And tracing and cutting ...

And more cutting ...

And then my brilliant idea of hardening the supple Corinthian Leather using fabric stiffener.

Let's just say that trying to take a shortcut by using a blow dryer didn't do the trick.

We ended up laying them out on the back porch to dry, where they got, well, a bit stiffer.

Sometimes the help of an adult was necessary, but it was minimal.

Evan didn't mind.

He waited patiently while the helper made the holders for the center support.

One happy impi warrior heads off down the hallway to meet unsuspecting students.

Scared yet?

(Sorry, I'm not feeling too witty or clever tonight, as I think I'm coming down with S's virus from last week. So tonight it's "just the facts, ma'am.")

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If you enjoyed this post, you might like Maces, Chain Mail, and 4-Year-Old Knights.

Inca Warriors

Last Friday we went back to the 1400s and down to South America. The Inca culture is a fascinating one to study. Unfortunately, I was only able to give kids bits and pieces of the story of the Incas, but my hope is that each of them took one small item of knowledge away.

This week we had nine boys(!), including a recent addition of a soaking-it-all-up preschooler and one eager visitor. No casualties this week!

What would homeschoolers do without hot glue?

An example of our slings and our bolas.

Some of the boys showing off their weapons.

The arsenal of the Inca included such weaponry as slings and bolas, in addition to a number of other weapons. This civilization was unbelievable with what they were able to accomplish, considering that they had no pack animals and no steel to use as tools. They crafted their phenomenal stonework - including the Inca road, which linked together about 25,000 miles of roadway - using fire, water, and wood wedges to cut the stones.

I could write for hours about the Incas, but I won't. I'd encourage you to read about them for yourself if you're so inclined.

I used a number of books to find out about the Incas, including these:

Aztec, Inca, and Maya (DK Eyewitness Books)

Machu Picchu (Unearthing Ancient Worlds)

This is one I want to read but haven't:

The Last Days of the Incas

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If you enjoyed this post, you might like Casualties: 1 ... and Counting.

Viking Warriors ... or Aliens?

I've decided that young boys don't much care if armor looks authentic, as long as their weapons are whackable.

Case in point ...

This is a picture of the only helmet ever found that is known to have come from the Viking age, unearthed from a burial mound. (Note the lack of Wagner-style horns.)

The world's only existing Viking Age helmet, from Gjermundbu in Ringerike

(from Kulturhistorisk Museum, Universitetet I Oslo)

From that, I attempted to make a helmet out of aluminum foil, duct tape, and copious amounts of red wine (hey, it was the middle of the night - cut me some slack).

Hand-to-hand combat.

You can see that, ahem, the kids' helmets didn't come out quite the way I envisioned them. They ended up looking more like alien heads than Viking helmets. But did the boys care? Not a whit.

Circling in for the kill.

They cared much more about their Viking axes - which, I must add, were based on actual axes - not some idea that came out of my kitchen drawer. After all, they were able to swing, smack, hit, and chop with them. Fortunately, the axe part was made out of posterboard (the kids got to decide if they wanted to have a "bronze" axe or "steel" one - the posterboard was silver on one side and gold on the other), so there were no decapitations or dismemberments. There was a little hot-glue repair required, however.

Which one will fall? Which one will succumb?

In my defense, I did actually present some educational information: English words from Old Norse, location of Scandinavia, examples of artwork, longboats, Greenland, blah, blah, blah.

Close combat.

In the end, all they cared about was the weapons. After all, the class is called Arms and Armor, right?

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If you enjoyed this post, you might like Maces, Chain Mail, and 4-Year-Old Knights.

Maces, Chain Mail, and 4-Year-Old Knights

Last Friday's co-op class was great fun. We talked about the Middle Ages and knights, which lasted for all of about 6.5 minutes, which also seems to be the attention span of a group of seven boys between the ages of 4 and 7.

The first thing we did was try on chain mail and a full-size helmet, generously lent to us by another mom in the co-op.

T modeling the chain mail.

Next on the agenda was making maces. I'd thought about making flails, but the chain seemed too iffy, considering that young kids would be doing the work. One nice thing about these maces was that they were too delicate to whack. So the boys carried them reverently home instead of swinging them willy nilly out in the parking lot.

Our "authentic" mace. Looks pretty good, doesn't it? This one was made by a 6-year-old.

Here the maces stand (paint drying), like bizarre torturous flowers that Roald Dahl might find lining a lush green yard.

This class is turning out to be a hoot. Granted, we hang by our fingernails on the edge of mayhem just about every minute we're in there, but our fingernails are mighty strong. Actually, the first 3 or 4 minutes are pretty calm, when the kids pick out the country we're studying on the world map and tell me all about what they know about it. So that only leaves, say, 57 minutes or so of hot glue, duct tape, sticks, whacks, and scuffles. No problem.

Surprisingly, it's difficult to find a craft for weapon making for this age group. The craft needs to do 3 things: 1) be doable for 4-year-olds, 2) look reasonably authentic, and 3) be safe. You'd be amazed at how hard it is to come up with something that meets all those requirement that you can do in an hour.

S's turn to model the armor and helmet. Can ya dig that warrior grimace?

So, did you guess yet how the maces were made?

Candy corn, along with wooden dowels, styrofoam balls, and metallic paint. Pretty clever, huh?

Our not-so intimidating unpainted maces. Now these look like they were made by 4-year-olds!

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If you liked this post, you might enjoy Casualties: 1 ... and Counting.

Casualties: 1 ... and Counting

Boys dueling with their "shinai"

I'm a bit late in posting this, but it was too good to ignore. Two Fridays ago was the first week of our weekly cooperative, cleverly called "Friday Co-op," because, well, it's on Fridays. This semester I'm responsible for seven - yes, seven - 4 to 7 year old boys.

In a class called "Arms & Armor."

About weapons.

Weapons they make.

Weapons they beat each other up with.

Yes, you read that right. A class of seven boys, all between the ages of 4 and 7, all geared up to learn about and make weapons for the sole purpose of whacking each other with them. My challenge (let's just go ahead and call it Mission Impossible, shall we?) is to provide these little bundles of destructive energy with a safe learning experience, with the emphasis on safe and a side helping of learning.

To say that it's challenging to find a way to come up with a craft to make a replica of an ancient weapon that's possible for a 4 year old to make, that looks reasonably close, and that's safe is, well, challenging. Ha.

Gearing up to whack someone.

So the first week we visited Japan, talked about Kendo, made shinai (which you see in use here), made shurikens, and talked a bit about the samurai. And only one kid got injured. One out of seven. Pretty good, I'd say.

The boys showing off their handwork.

Last week we did blowdart guns and warrior shields from Borneo, and we talked a bit about the island and its indigenous people, but unfortunately I forgot my camera so didn't get pictures. No one got injured, and only one kid had a hysterical breakdown. Again, pretty good.

This week I'm planning on a quick jaunt to medieval Europe, with plans to make a mace (not to be confused with a flail) and a breastplate. One of our remarkable moms at Co-op lent me her chainmail to show the kids. It's amazing.

I'll post pictures of that after this Friday's class and give a casualty count. Stay tuned.

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If you liked this post, you might enjoy Gearing up for School.