Days of Knights and Damsels

We've been having an awesome time doing several projects from the book Days of Knights and Damsels.  Both kids have had an on-going interest in castles and knights, and Jared recently loved the graphic novel about King Arthur that my mom bought him, so I ordered this book about a month ago for us to look through. We've made several of the craft ideas in the past two weeks.

Here's our attempt at making Robin Hood caps, which we found are really called bycockets. I really misjudged the amount of felt to use, so the poor hats really just perched on top of their heads, but they enjoyed watching me hand sew them (a first for me!). It brought up a great discussion about how sewing was so important until very recently - how most people didn't just throw away a pair of socks because they had a hole in them.

This was probably our most fun project in the past few weeks. As you can see, I couldn't resist making my own castle,too! The book called it "A Castle in Your Pocket."

Ok. This one definitely didn't turn out great at all. It was probably just me not following directions correctly, but these princess hats were way too small for our heads. Also, the kids were in a mood to throw glitter all over the floor and smear glue all over the table rather than decorate their hats, so I was the only one to finish the project since I was still really into it.

These cloaks didn't really turn out like they should have either, but I think it was because the paper bags were too small. This was actually the first project Alexa said she wanted to do when the book first arrived in the mail, but I didn't have paper bags at that time.

She was so excited at first to do this project, but within a minute of having the cloak on, both she and Jared wanted it off, and they've been laying on the counter ever since. Ah, well. You just never know for how long kids will be interested in something.

After we get back from the Smoky Mountains, I'm sure we'll be perusing the book for more ideas. It has several medieval games and recipes that look fun. Look for a part 2 to this post in the future.