Warwolf

During our visit to the Tower of London, we saw a reenactor dressed up as a medieval priest who gave us an overview of the history of the Tower as a royal palace, a prison, and a fortress.  A full-sized replica trebuchet was on site to demonstrate the power of this medieval siedge weapon.  It took five adults to launch the trebuchet.

The trebuchet is of special interest because the weapon has been traced back to being first used by Edward I during his siege of Stirling Castle.

While Tiger and I discussed about medieval siege weapons, I was given a quick education by Tiger of the differences between a trebuchet and a mangonel.  If your knowledge of medieval weaponry is like mine, i.e. that you think all catapulting machines work in the same way, you will benefit (as I have) from watching the two clips below:

1) Trebuchet

2) Mangonel

We learn much about the trebuchet from the following clip:

Why do we want to know so much about the trebuchet?  The main reason is that Tiger is passionate about everything that has to do with warfares and weaponry, historical and otherwise.  After hours of listening and watching experts talk about this medieval war machine, we decided it was time to build one ourselves.

It took us a few days to put the trebuchet together...

and when it was fully assembled, all of us thought it looked beautiful!

Naturally, we had to test whether it to see how good it is.

Unfortunately, our first few attempts at launching the trebuchet didn't go too smoothly.

The projectile either didn't go in an arc path, or was trapped in the launch net, or was launched backwards (gasp!).  It was slightly frustrating to have to work out what went wrong.  Not wanting to give up now, after we had spent so much time putting the model together, we pressed on with more tweaking, taking into consideration the following factors that might affect the success of our launch:

• tension of string
• length of string
• weight of projectile
• size of projectile
• weight of counter-weight load

It's very exciting when it finally worked!

 

Tiger spent the rest of the day trying to break the record for the longest distance the projectile would go.  So far, his record is at 17 feet.

When we heard that Warwick Castle has the world's largest working trebuchet, we had to go and see it at work!

Check out the size of these real, medieval trebuchet balls made of solid stone!

This post is linked up to:

1. History and Geography Meme #100
2. Collage Friday - Boxes, Schoolwork & Squirrels
3. Entertaining and Educational - Teaching Kids to Tie Their Shoes
4. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with No Time
5. Homeschool Mother's Journal {November 23, 2013}
6. Hip Homeschool Hop - 11/26/2013

Edward "Longshanks"

Compared to his father, Henry III, Edward I appears to have led a much more eventful life.  A quick summary of his life is shown in the following documentary (from 9 mins to 17 mins):

We started our study with a narration from Our Island Story, typed and pasted into the accordian timeline that we have been working on for years.

This was followed by watching relevant episodes from two excellent DVDs.  Each was done from a slightly different perspective by two respectable English historians.  One thing that I always emphasise to Tiger in our study of history is to learn from as many sources as possible before drawing our own conclusions with regards to how history is to be interpreted or represented.

We also played many, many rounds of History Heroes.  We first played this game after reading Suji's review a few years ago.  When we first played the game in 2011, Tiger was at the beginning of his British history study so he didn't get very far beyond the Normans.  Now, after two years of continuous reading from different sources of British history (mostly in his own leisure time), he is able to win each game against me.  Regular readers of this blog are aware of how s-l-o-w-l-y we go in history around here so in that sense, Tiger has been "forced" to read up on anything that interests him outside of our 'school time'.

I remember that the Tower of London has a Medieval Palace with Edward I's bedchamber preserved there (although he hardly ever used it, considering that he mostly lived in encampments due to his numerous campaigns), so off we went.

Since the focus of our visit was on Edward I, we headed straight to the Medieval Palace.

There is not much to see of Edward I's bedchamber apart from the space it was supposedly located, as well as a few original timber frame and wall plastering.

Since Edward I was always out and about, I don't suppose he had much use for his bedchamber at the Tower anyway.  Nonetheless, it was good to have had a look at it:

The rest of the Medieval Palace has been well preserved, with much information about the medieval kings and courtly life dotted around.

The small chapel in the Medieval Palace was particularly interesting as it has marks a spot in front of the altar where Henry VI allegedly died.

Before we left, Tiger made a medieval knight's helmet out of paper to mark our visit.

The Tower is so steeped in history that I am quite sure we shall be back for future visits.


This post is linked up to:

1. Look What We Did 
2. Hip Homeschool Hop - 10/15/2013
3. History and Geography Meme #95
4. Collage Friday: Exciting News about a Great Journey
5. Entertaining and Educational - Oct 18
6. TGIF Linky Party #99
7. Homeschool Review and Resource Link-Up
8. Weekly Wrap-up: The One in Which I Felt Super Productive