Normans and human bones
Just a little story for you this week...
The child (henceforth 'Maggot') and I spent Sunday, two weeks ago, creating a mindmap.
It all began with a search to find out how people ate differently before and after the Norman invasion (the famous 1066).
I've really enjoyed learning about this bit of history with her. I don't think I really understood or knew about the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings before.
We really imagined together what it would have been like. What it would have been like to be an English knight, to have to walk for five days before fighting the Vikings at York (and then walk 6 days back to fight the Normans). What it would have been like to have been a foot soldier - they had to supply their own kit and provisions. What it would have been like to have been one of the few Vikings who sailed home. 300 ships came over and only 24 went back.
Maggot had to make a factsheet.
We found out that there had been a proper scientific, archaeological study, just last year, that examined archaeological evidence in one geographical area, to find out more about the diets of normal people before, during and after the Norman invasion. We decided it would be a bit special to create a factsheet on this study, particularly as it contained new wisdom; it wouldn't be pulling together the same tired tropes.
We read through an article about the study together, sentence by sentence, and talked about what some of the harder words meant. One evening, when Maggot was at her dad's, I went through the source material and pulled together a mindmap. I grouped the findings by the archaeological method used.
(Yes, it's a bit cheaty, but I did make her help me simplify the language and then copy it all out by hand. This is a child that DOES NOT enjoy writing longhand. I was very proud that she did it without too much complaining.)
We stuck the bits down to make the mindmap, decorated it with a couple of illustrations, and had a moment of enjoyment as we surveyed our work.
I sent it off to Maggot's teacher, and I tweeted it to the lead author of the study.
Fast forward to Wednesday. The author we tweeted, and one of the co-authors, messaged back!
One of the things you'll never predict before you have kids is the very weird arrangement of words you will hear as a direct result of becoming a parent. And this week I can add this to my collection: "Please do let me know if I can send you both anything more on Normans or human bones!"