Medieval/Fantasy Resources for Your Classroom Theme: Part 1

One of my favorite themes of the year is my medieval-themed trimester. Originally this was slated for the third trimester, but soon outgrew the trimester as there's really just so many ways to implement this theme in my third grade classroom!

As all you fellow theme-crazed and inspired teachers know, it takes a lot of time and effort to compile resources and comb sites for background information and fun projects. To save you a little time, I have compiled some of my favorite sites and resources for my medieval/fantasy themed trimester.

This post is organized by General Knowledge, Reading, and Math resources. Writing and Art resources are featured in the next post. There's a link below or you can head that way now.


General Knowledge

Beacon Learning Center created a nice interactive on knights and the medieval hierarchy called Knight in the Night. I used this with a worksheet with review questions and vocabulary focus for homework or for a computer station in the classroom.

Skipton Castle - An English Castle. Lots of great information and some fun resources to print and use.

Medieval Siege Engines are a great way to incorporate some STEM into your theme. Learn about siege engines here and check out my Medieval and Castles Theme Pinterest Board for some ideas on building catapults. YouTube is a great resources for siege engine videos.

Learn the lingo for parts of the castle with this freebie worksheet. These terms show up quite often in stories, on worksheets, and in video clips.

BBC has an amazing wealth of information and resources on the site Hands on History: The Normans! Too bad I don't live in England where we could field trip to a castle! How cool would that be?!

Build your own castle model for book reports, class projects, or for a model to launch marshmallows at with your own newly built catapult!

More general Medieval Themed Ideas on my Pinterest Board Medieval/Castles Theme for the Classroom.



Reading

I have used Castle in the Attic for whole group and small group centers rotations. I was fortunate enough to be able to borrow a whole set from another elementary school library.

I love Castle Diary! This one has featured as small group reading in centers and sometimes as small groups lead by me. I would love to do this one whole class, but lack of books hasn't made that a reality. I scrounge copies from the local libraries and school libraries to get enough for center rotations.

A to Z Mysteries: The Castle Crime was a quick great read whole class. This was a,"Oh look, it's a $1 deal from Scholastic and would work well for our theme!", kind of book. Bring on the whole class sets, yes!!

Everything a good fantasy needs! Magic, knights, magicians, and ogres! We read The Time Warp Trio: Knights of the Kitchen Table as a whole class because I was able to get the whole set on loan from the public library! The worksheet and activity set that I used is here.

Bad Wolf Press has a great array of musicals. I have many of their musicals and just love them. They are so much fun to perform at the end of the year. Good Manners: A Medieval Quest for Polite Behavior is great for reading too if you don't want to do a complete performance. I usually create review worksheets and a test to gain grades.



Math

Knight Division Color By Square worksheet is a nice review filler for your early finishers or the during testing so can't teach new content season. ☺

Plan out a castle siege using elapsed time! The project page features a castle surrounded by siege engines.

11 activities are completed in Quest for the Kingdom: An End of the Year Math Review Project- Gamification Style. Students level up through the medieval hierarchy in a gamification math review and create a keepsake notebook with all the themed activities.

Keep track of the knight's earnings and losses at the tournament in Tournament Checkbook: Leveled Addition and Subtraction. The story and accompanying worksheet is leveled to allow for differentiation.

The King is throwing a feast. It is your job to set the King's table with the correct amount of food and cutlery using fractions of a group. Check out the blog post on Medieval Feast Fractions for more information.  

Another color by square worksheet. This time is rounding to hundreds. There are other fun medieval and fantasy themed color by square worksheets too. I'd recommend searching their site for the topics you'd like.

Students become Castle Architects and build a castle with 2 floors in the keep and a surrounding curtain wall by using perimeter and area. Read more about the project on my blog post.

Medieval Themed Resources for Writing and Art in the next post!