Tuesday 15 January 2013

Just Another Homeschooling Field Trip

Our history co-op of 16 children met up at Oxford Castle today, taking a school's tour and having a workshop about castles.

Busy Timmy and his friend
climb the Oxford Castle motte(for the fiftieth time!)

 We have been studying Our Island Story, and most recently, about England just after 1066. England's third Norman king, Stephen, basically stole the throne from his aunt, Matilda, but after fighting a civil war for 14 years, they eventually agreed to let Stephen stay king as long Matilda's son (later Henry II) could become king next. Some of these historical events played out at Oxford Castle, so it was neat to be in the very place where Matilda escaped from the tower on a snowy evening, wearing white bed-sheets so she wouldn't be seen.

The view from the top of the tower
Catapault-building Workshop:
launching marshmallows
at the enemy's castle

True to form, a 2-hour session lasted us all day, since once the tour and workshop were over, we used the rest of the day to explore what we hadn't seen on the tour, re-visit some of the cool parts, climb the motte another hundred or so times, watch the tourist film, dress up as prison officers, body-pump on the old jail treadmill.

It was tempting to leave him here!

On the back to our car, we stopped off at the covered market and ordered some cheese from the cheese man. We finished off with a family pose by Oxford's famous Radcliffe Camera, now part of the university's library system.

Choosing Cheese

The Crew of Four
in front of Radcliffe Camera
Basically, just another "school-plus" trip that we enjoy so often as homeschoolers!


2 comments:

  1. Lovely photos! A good workshop too xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Kim. We should write them with comments to let them know how good they were with home-ed kids -- it takes a bit something special to cope with all that enthusiasm!

    ReplyDelete

Whatcha thinkin'? Don't be shy if you've got something to say!