What the Hnef-tafl?

This term Nathan chose to learn about Vikings for history. We borrowed some books on Vikings from the library, which I read and then listed different aspects of Viking life to focus on - one for each week of term. Each week Nathan reads the relevant pages from the books and then answers some questions about what he has read. He does this fairly independently. One of the books is from the "Hands on History" series from QED Publishing which includes lots of crafty activities to do as you learn about Vikings. Another is set out as a story of a Viking family. Nathan enjoys reading so he has found this a good way to focus on history.

Last week, Nathan was reading about what the Vikings did for fun and in their spare time. They enjoyed sport and games, one of which was the game "Hnef-tafl" (pronounced Neff-tah-fell) which means 'king's table'. The Hands on History book had instructions for making the game, which I encouraged Nathan to do and which he made, somewhat reluctantly.


Once it was completed Nathan and I had a game, and since then it has been played over and over again. The kids love it. The adults love it. Initially, it sat on the end of the kitchen bench to show Daddy when he got home from work, but there it has stayed. I find it astonishing that a game that was played by people from the other side of the world and some thousand years ago can be recreated and now sits on my kitchen bench. Of course, a game from a millenia ago does not come with a printed rule book and so we have had to add 'house rules' as we go, but it is a surprisingly engaging game.

Nathan does not particulaly enjoy history, and so I really appreciate that the flexibity of home educating allow us to choose topics within history that do interest him. Before we started home schooling, and while we were preparing all the documentation for the Board of Studies interview, we read the Board of Studies outcomes for each subject. Since we have been through the school system, and since my husband still works in that system, we found it difficult to think outside the outcomes as defined by the Board of Studies. Many of our outcomes were just as they had defined them. However, when it came to the HSIE and English outcomes, the sheer number of words in the BOS syllabus were overwhelming and simply not useful because of their verbosity. Those documents are seriously OTT!

Since DH is a history teacher, I asked him what he thought learning about history was really about. What should we be aiming for when we help our children delve into history? This little diagram is what we came up with, and I really love it, as it is easy to keep in the back of my mind week to week and term to term, to ensure that what we are spending time on lines up with what we set out to achieve. I fact, I'm so chuffed with this little pic that I thought I'd share it on here :)We also came up with these Key Skills, many of which won't really come into play until the kids are a bit older:

Using Information:
Locating and using sources of information
Identifying different types of sources and their elements
Evaluating the accuracy, reliability, bias and usefulness of sources

Asking Questions:
Asking Who? What? Why? When?
Investigating the impact of environments on events and people
Investigating changes over time
Finding causes of events
Finding impacts and responses to events
Finding other perspectives about events

So, thats history here. How do you approach history in your home educating?