Gettin' Medieval

Day 2 in Houston was spent at the Texas Renaissance Festival. It's usually only open on the weekends, but they have a school week once a season. Our families decided to take advantage of it--a place to have family fun and a great learning experience for our home-schoolers.

The first show we went to was The Falconer.The title immediately made me think of the skit on Saturday Night Live. But this was not as ridiculous. We learned about rare falcons, owl, buzzards--all that had special skills like speed, vision or the ability to tear a live chicken to shreds in 15 seconds.

The next feature we saw was one most of us were excited about--jousting. Our knight was the Spaniard. They started by snagging rings and then got to the fun part--trying to knock each other off their horses. The Spaniard knocked the Englishman off his horse and then was victorious in their sword fight. We felt very proud of our Spaniard. It was great entertainment.

We took a break for lunch and the boys had some more entertainment--from their food. They had been begging to get a big turkey leg. So we indulged them...

After eating meals fit for kings, we went to the next performance--Sword Fighting School.

It piqued the kids interest because they actually participated in it. They enrolled (after making a brief pledge to never use these skills to attack another person; only in self-defense) and were taught sword-fighting skills such as the five blocking positions, forward and back stepping, and lunging. Here are some pics...
Their play continued as they participated in some of the Medieval games and crafts areas, such as the rolling balls and the two-stick yo-yos (sorry, we didn't get a name for what they were called)...
We saw a couple of more entertaining shows, like the Art of Self-Defense, where participants fought using weaponry and hand-to-hand combat, and the Singing Pirates, who bellowed a series of Pirate songs, including one of their favorites--the popular Veggie Tales' song "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything."

As a reward for the kids' good behavior, we allowed them to go on one ride...

Gracie went with Mom, Grant and Zoe on the Giant Swing.

Gus did the Giant Bungee. We were very proud of him because he went up very high.

And Beedle rode a rooster on his favorite, the merry-go-round.

We wrapped our day at the Texas Renaissance Fair with one last photo. I think you can tell by most of the kids faces that they had a good time.