Hark! Tis My First Medieval Feast!

We are down to 2 teaching days left! It's hard to believe! A great part of me is extremely excited, and another part is creeping towards sentamentality (is that a word?). The final days with the first group of kids that have been "mine" for a year are here. It has been good.

Today we capped off our medieval study with a Feast. Thankfully, yesterday was a holiday in Hong Kong (dragon boats), and so I had the day to prepare. It ended up being quite the adventure, and finally ended late in the night/early in the morning with the final touches on a castle cake and the fastest possible home-made tinfoil costume for a knight. The day included a desperate search for icing sugar (eventually found), a more desperate search for a "herald's" costume (which was not found and resulted in a run to Toys'r'us for a knight's sword and shield), the making of my first stew (medieval style), and two trips to the Island.

It was worth every bit of a time that went into it, though! I was lucky to have 5 wonderful moms come and help out, which made the morning so much easier. The students came up with some impressive costumes! We had lots of peasants, a most entertaining jester, a number of damsels, princesses, Robin Hood, and a very elegantly dressed King and Queen! For entertainment, our little jester had us all laughing (and a couple of surprise jesters stopped by with a juggling and yo-yo act), the minstrel was great, and then capped off by a performance of St. George and the Dragon. We learned some old English, so I was pleased to hear students asking me "whither is the privy?" and "good morrow!" throughout the day. Our classroom was ready for the occasion as we've been doing this unit for some time now. We have monstrous castles, a door that is a castle drawbridge with a moat, a castle wall, coats of arms, and stained glass windows. We had cheese, crackers, "ales" and fruit to start the Feast, followed by the main course of medieval stew (it turned out pretty good, Mom!) on trenchers (bread), and big drumsticks to gloriously rip apart like those big fellas on all the medieval movies. We had apple crumble for dessert, as well as my not-so-authentic but high in fun castle cake. We also played chess and Capture the Flag later on.

I'm tired tonight, but it really was a fun day and I'm surprised by how well it all went over! A nice way to finish the year! I see no reason to stop the flow of parties at this point- tomorrow we'll do the bowling/pizza party, and then on Friday we'll cap it off with a "monster smartie party".

Well, I'm more than ready to hit the hay tonight. Farethee well!