Mon chevalier

This year, one of my son's social studies units included medieval history. He was assigned two projects to complete related to this topic. First he was to build a castle with all major parts labeled en francais. (He attends french school and yes, I'm jealous.)



We were fortunate to visit a thousand year old chateau in Portugal, last summer. We looked at all of our photographs of the castle for inspiration.

My son (in red) and his granddad. That's
right; three stories up and not a railing in sight.

Then with some guidance from his granddad who introduced us to the castle in the first place, he made his masterpiece. Voila!!




His second task was to dress up as person from medieval times. My son is...well, he's a boy whose drawn to anything with swords, swords or swords so I bet you can guess what he chose? That's right! He decided to be a knight. I know the times of knights and castles predates the old farm house a few hundred years or so, give or take a year or two, but every farm could use a knight to protect the crops, the animals and the noble inhabitants, wouldn't you agree? Especially a knight as handsome as this...

Mon chevalier noir

I tried to get him to smile but was informed that smiling is not a skill knights learn when they attend knight school as a page.


However, with minimal coaxing, oh all right, no coaxing at all, my chevalier was able to loosen up a little.


Vraiment...really...he doesn't take after me. I may be a Rooster but I would never ham it up like that. Fortunately, I have him!

Note: for any of you with knights in training in your own home, this knight helmet was made using one of the Colonel's buckets! Originally spray painted bronze several years ago, we spruced it up with some black spray paint. Maybe, that's why he's smiling?!