Childhood in the Middle ages By Arpan Kundu
Childhood in the Middle ages By: Arpan Kundu
Essential Question Original Question: What toys did children play in the middle ages. I wanted to do this topic originally because I saw someone's topic about sports in the middle ages. So I wondered to myself, “what did children do besides sports? ” so then I decided to base my genius hour project on Toys in the Middle Ages. Final question: As I researched and researched I found other cool facts about children in the middle ages. Then I suddenly lost interest on my first question. Lastly I decided to research on the “Childhood in the Middle Ages”.
Average childhood • Not every child in the middle ages would survive before the turned into adults. In fact it has been suggested that 25% of children may have died in their first year, half (12. 5%) as many may have died at the age of 4, and a quarter as many (6%) between ages 5 -9. That means every child had a 43. 5% out of a 100% chance of living before they hit adulthood. This may have been because most children didn’t have the advantages we have now, such as new technology, research, and medicines. Children had died at a young age due to sicknesses or even lack of nutrition. • At the ages 7 -14 was an average childhood in the middle ages. When a child turns 14 years old and onwards, it was the growth when a child turns into an adult.
Punishments Like adults children were also given punishment if they had broken a law. Children weren’t given as sever punishments compared to an adult. But when a child had broken a law they were forbidden to marry or excused from confessing to a priest. The laws and punishment for children were change generally around the time they hit puberty. (Age 12 for girls and age 14 for boys. ) In school students were punished as well. Until the late 20 th century teachers were allowed to hit students. You might be thinking that students would get beat up with wooden rulers from their teachers, well your right. Boys were often beat up with rods or twigs. Tudor school (higher class schools) often had the harshest punishments. The teacher would have a stick with birch twigs attached to it and hit the student on its bare buttock. Now mostly parents hit their children. However in the 20 th century and the early 21 st century these punishments in school were banned from all schools.
School and Education Just like children now, children in the middle ages were also enrolled into school. From my research I found out that, children would be homeschooled and had been taught from there parents knowledge. But only wealthier families had the money to send there child to formal education. Before the end of the 11 th century AD, almost all formal education of young children of wealthy families was provided by clergy members. In this form of teaching students learned how to read and write in there native language and sometimes Latin. Students learned Latin because it was the churches language.
School and Education As years moved on educations centers that weren’t church-affiliated were built. Most of these schools however taught law or administrative profession. Another type of education were monasteries (for boys) or nunneries (for girls). At these places student would learn Latin. It wasn’t until 1070’s the first modern public school was made. Usually boys went to school to learn and girls were taught home. In the public school students were learned the Latin ABC’s. Many boys and girls proceeded no further, using the skill chiefly to read in their own language or English. Lastly, only a minority of boys and very few girls went on to learn Latin grammar and to become proficient in their language.
Work • Believe or not, children were forced to work. But children didn’t have to contribute fulltime work; they just had to contribute enough workload. Of course poorer family children had to work more than the wealthy children. The work children had to do was simple. They were expected to do work like feed the livestock or farm animals, wash dishes, or take care of their younger siblings throughout the day. But that was if they were lucky. Children started to do serious work around the ages 12 to 14. But it was common that children were unlucky, sometimes children would be separated from their parents and sent off somewhere else to be servants. This way it trained children to be disciplined. By sending children away to be servant this helped parents reduce on expenses. When children were sent away to become servants they worked on farms or work in domestic service to apprenticeships in which one learnt a skilled craft or trade. But apprenticeship excluded the poor. Boys in the wealthier classes continued their schooling, especially in the church, law, or administration. Other Boys employed in churches as chorister or clerks. Wealthy children were often sent to other great nobility households or leading churchmen households. They learned aristocratic manners, and in some cases underwent training in military skills. It wasn’t until children's mid-twenties that they were independent and retried from their jobs.
Play/Entertainment/activities Children in the middle ages can’t spend their childhood always working. Children played with wooden dolls, or tops and blocks. Sometimes children made homemade toys with material around their house. Another type of entertainment for children was, reading stories. These stories were filled with heroes or myths. An example of famous story we now is “Robin Hood”. Children still play games from the middle ages, for example “make believe” or “pretend. ” This would be when a girl would take a doll and dress it up or when a boy would make a castle out blocks. We also still play hide n seek, tag, see saw, hopscotch, Blinds Man Bluff, Tic Tac Toe, Checkers, Chess, and Ring Around the Rosie. Some of the physical activities we still do now are Swimming, Archery, Ring toss, Wrestling, horseshoes, and Tug of war.
Fun Game that Were Played One game that I thought was interesting and fun would be “Prisoner’s base”. The objective of this game is to have more prisoners by the end of the time limit. You would need at least 10 players and a large place to play. How to play: There needs to be 2 teams divided equally and a line between the two teams. Behind each team (20 -30 feet) there would be a square (prison) drawn in chalk. Each team picks one player to be sent to prison. Then each team would try to rescue the prisoner. If the rescuer was successfully reach prison without getting tag he or she would run back to their side. But if a rescuer were unsuccessful to reach the prison by getting tagged they would be sent to jail. At the end of the time the team with the most amounts of prisoners won the game.
- Slides: 9