Viking Lesson Plans

 This past week, we studied the incredible Vikings. We decided to use the "Early American History Curriculum" created by Beautiful Feet Books as our guide. If you aren't familiar with this curriculum, it is completely literature based. You have the option to purchase the entire curriculum, including all the books you will need on their website. However, before investing in all of the books I wanted to make sure we even liked this curriculum. In addition, our library has some of the books that I could use for free. With that in mind, I only purchased the Parent Teacher Guidebook from Beautiful Feet Book for around $20.

I really enjoyed the Vikings Unit from Beautiful Feet Books. Leif the Lucky was a wonderful book to read aloud and the discussion questions included were very good. 

However, I craved a bit more understanding on who the Vikings really were and also more hands on learning activities. With our lesson plan below, I was able to better understand and teach my children in the way that I hoped.

Recommended Books: 

• Usborne Starting Point History Who Were the Vikings? (Excellent overall view of the vikings)
• Leif the Lucky by Ingrid & Edgar Parin D.Aulaire (required book)
• D’Aulaires Norse Book of Myths by Ingrid & Edgar Parin D.Aulaire (beautiful illustrations!)

Day 1 - Introduction to the Vikings and Long Boats:

• Read: Who Were the Vikings? (p.2-3 from Usborne)
• Read: How did the Vikings get around? (p.20-21 from Usborne)
• Watch: What’s so special about Viking Ships? and An Incredible Viking Voyage (Talk about how the design of the boat enabled it to be so fast and successful.)
• Label a Viking Boat from Word United (we glued these into our notebooks)
• Draw a Viking Boat from Art Projects for Kids (we drew these in our notebooks)
• Optional: Instead of drawing a boat, you can create a Viking Boat out of a recycled juice carton. We did this during the summer, so we went a different route today.

Day 2 - Lesson one and Norse Religious Beliefs

• Complete lesson one from Beautiful Feet Books
• Read: Did the Vikings believe in God? (p.10-13 from Usborne)
• Learn about Norse Mythology (Read the pages your children are interested in from D’aulaires Norses Book of Myths). While I read, my children drew illustrations of four of their favorite things in their notebooks.

Day 3 - Lesson two and the Aurora Borealis (northern lights)

• Complete lesson two from Beautiful Feet Books
• Learn about the Northern Lights (watch this video from FreeSchool - the vikings had no compasses and relied on the location of the suns and stars to guide them on their ships)
• Northern Lights Art Project from Paint on All the Tables (my kids added silhouettes of viking boats instead of trees on the bottom.) I absolutely love how these turned out.

Day 4 - Complete lesson three and four from Beautiful Feet Books

Day 5 - Lesson five and Viking Runestones

• Complete lesson five from Beautiful Feet Books
• Read: Could the Vikings Read and Write? (p.19 from Usborne)
• Create Viking Runestones out of Air Dry Clay. We used popsicle sticks to carve the runes and the Usborne book as a guide of how to draw each letter. Point out the Runestone in “Leif the Lucky” on p.32 and in the Beautiful Feet Book’s curriculum. Use the runes from p.19 in the Usborne book or this printable as a guide to carve your runestone.
• Optional: Play Animal Charades (without using words, try to act out different animals -  relate this to how the Native Americans and Norseman would have felt not being able to understand one another.)

Day 6 - Lesson six and Viking Family Life

• Complete lesson six in Beautiful Feet Books
• Add a picture of Leif the Lucky into a History Timeline Book
• What was a Viking family like? (Read and discuss any of these pages from Usborne: p.6-9, 22-23, 28-29)
• Complete a Notebooking Page. At the top of the page write your own Viking nickname. Start with your first name. Add “the” and an adjective that is immediately followed by a noun, such as “William the Littlebeard”. Color and cut out these Viking Paper Dolls from Practical Pages and glue them onto the left side of the notebooking page. Ask your child what he/she would choose to do if he/she were a Viking. Write about it on the right side of the page (the child can write 1-3 sentences on their own or you can write a long narration for the child). You can see our notebooking page on the bottom left of the image below.

**To see a visual flip through of our Viking Unit, please see the “Viking” highlight on my instagram page @thenaylorhome**

**If you'd like to print these lesson plans click here: Viking Lesson Plans**