History and Geography with The Magic Tree House: The Knight at Dawn


This year I wanted to use The Magic Tree House Book Series to teach my younger two history and geography. We really enjoy Jack and Annie's adventures and I figured it would give us a great variety of topics. We found learning history chronologically a little boring, so following the Tree House series would allow us to learn about different time periods and places every few weeks, while keeping learning exciting. 

Along with the Magic Tree House books, we check out other books relevant to the topic and time period from the library. I also pick up an interesting book that relates to the subject being covered, to read out loud to the kids before bed every night. To enhance our lessons, I created notebook pages for the kids to record their learning, which can be downloaded below, along with doing some exciting activities.

We just completed Book 2 of the series, The Knight at Dawn.

Books we picked up to go along with this unit:
- Magic Treehouse Knights & Castles Research Guide
- Usborne World History: Medieval World
- The Kingfisher Atlas of the Medieval World
- Eyewitness Books: Medieval Life
- The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History
- 1001 Inventions & Awesome Facts from Muslim Civilization; National Geographic Society.
- Usborne Classics Retold: The Tales of King Arthur



I created workbook pages to go with every book from the series for the kids to record their learning which can be downloaded HERE
And extra pages that are specific to The Knight at Dawn can be downloaded HERE
One of the main reasons why I decided to create my own materials is because most workbook pages out on the internet do not have guided lines for young writers. Neatness matters a lot to me, so I wanted to set my kids up for neat writing success. Other MTH bundles I came across were specific to the book, simply as a book study. I wanted to dive deeper and relate it more to social studies rather than the literature itself. I included a page called "The Jack Files", which is for students to jot down factual information, like Jack does in the stories. Also included is a page called "Annie's Diary" for students to write a slightly exaggerated diary entry the way Annie would tell the story of their adventure. This part of the workbooks focuses on creative writing and note taking. 


Here are links to some beneficial YouTube videos:
1001 Inventions and the Library of Secrets
Free School- Castles
A Mini Guide to Medieval Castles
How to draw a Castle for Kids


 Another fun activity is making shields from cardboard and morning stars made with newspaper balls covered in foil and braided yarn as the chain!

 


A great field trip to take after this unit is a visit to Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament.
https://www.medievaltimes.com/

The kids really enjoyed this unit and are ready and excited for Book #3, Mummies in the Morning!


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