I wrote recently how we had been learning about the Tudors and had visited the fabulous Bramhall Hall. We also made a lapbook and I thought I’d share the details of it here and a little about how I approached the subject.
D and E are 7 and 6 at the time of this, so we haven’t covered the whole of the Tudor period in any great depth, we will do that again in the future.
Resources Required
For this lesson I used the following resources:
- Tudor Wordmat from Teaching Packs
- Tudor Guide from Teaching Packs (this really is fabulous and make the subscription price worth it for this item alone).
- Battle of Bosworth powerpoint
- Battle of Bosworth comprehension
- Tudor House
- Tudor House Powerpoint
- Henry VIII’s 6 wives slide
- King Henry VIII mindmap
- Lapbook templates from Home School Share
- A3 card for the lapbook
- Relevant images to decorate with
The Lesson
We started by talking about what we understood by the Tudor period. The children knew about Henry VIII and his two daughters (Em has a fascination with Elizabeth I) and they knew he had married six times. We talked about how there were six Tudor monarchs and how King Henry VII had come to rule. We reviewed the battle of Bosworth Powerpoint and then they both completed this comprehension task. We talked about how people would marry to forge alliances and how at the start of the Tudor reign, people lived until around age 35, and that it wasn’t a prosperous country.
We then moved on to the Teaching Packs Tudor Guide and we talked about how the population was very different today, and how England would have been a very different place. We talked about villages and the trades that would exist as well as the layout of towns, and why people might eventually move there. I then got the older two to draw and annotate a Tudor village and a Tudor town. I was really impressed with how much they’d taken on from this.
We then looked at Tudor buildings and some of the things that made them typically Tudor. The PowerPoint presentation is good for that and we then stuck the Tudor house image into the lapbook and labelled some key points. We then at this stage visited Bramhall Hall. I asked the children to predict what we would see there and then Em took pictures to make into a guide book once we were home.
Next up we looked at the reign of Henry VIII and how and why he married so many times. I started this by asking the children to complete the mind map with four key things that they already knew about him. We then discussed that and talked a little about why he is often one of the best-known monarchs.
We then looked at the six women he married (BBC bitesize has some excellent short videos for this) and following this completed a lapbook insert of the six wives, with the children writing a key fact for each one. I have also created a lapbook insert with the names of the six Tudor Monarchs which we completed as we learnt about them. The children added a fact to each insert.
After looking at Henry VIII and his wives as looked at his children who succeeded him before then turning to Queen Elizabeth I and looking at how her Tudor England compared with that of her Grandfather, Henry VII. We then moved to another study about Tudor explorers which I’ll share soon.
Other Things To Explore
We have touched on the topic of the Tudors in a light way as there is so much we could study. We didn’t look at food and drink or entertainment or how Tudor England sat within the wider context of the world. I found that a lot of the material was aimed at slightly older children, so the Teaching Packs guide was ideal as I could use most of that (although in truth we only scratched the surface).
You could, however, look at some of these ideas:
- dressing like a Tudor, and consider what your position might be in society.
- You could learn about the arts that were prevalent at the time
- make some Tudor foods
- Build a Tudor House using straws/craft sticks
- Take a look at my Tudor Explorers Lapbook.
