Activities for Younger Norse?

1a. Activities for 5 years olds
    Posted by:  rosie5823 to the Norsefolk discussion group
    Date: Tue Feb 25, 2014 2:19 pm ((PST))

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what activities would be suitable (and safe) for 5 years old boys to do whilst in costume?

DARC has had a fair amount of experience with public demonstrations. We 
centre on daily life and the craftsman, and also are using both full 
role playing (floating interpretive level presentation of characters and viewpoints), and fairly high authenticity standards. 

Kadja & Unn - Norstead 2000

One of the single most engrossing activities for younger visitors has related to water. We are well equipped with cooperage. A major task in any 'working' day is hauling water, for which we have a couple of yokes and lots of buckets and pails.


One of our team interprets the character of a 'household slave', and she undertakes a number of tasks related to this every presentation day. Gathering a bunch of kids to 'help' bring water from source back into camp always works well. We have a number of both pails and buckets with wooden lids that keeps water in the container, rather than on the carrier.

Volunteer Helper - L'Anse aux Meadows 2010

Related to that is washing up. We have a large tub especially for this. Three primary tasks : washing the dishes after meals, washing selected clothing, washing fleece as part of the textile preparation series.

Kadja - L'Anse aux Meadows 2012

Kids love to play in water - and the whole series of getting the water, doing the task, dumping the waste water - all re-enforces how much raw labour is required for the simplest task.

There are images related to all this on the DARC web site. Check the various museum presentation descriptions, especially at L'Anse aux Meadows for Parks Canada.




First image - Darrell Markewitz, Remainder by Paul Halsz