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VIKINGS UNIT STUDY

This school year has been interrupted time and time again with traveling and moving and lots of unknowns.  It looks like we’ll be studying the Middle Ages again next year, but honestly, I’m kind of ok with that.
 
With all our shenanigans this year, I am proud to say we did finish one pretty thorough unit study: on Vikings! These guys were fascinating.  This post is all about what we read and what we did.
 
A Few of the Books We Read:  

 
Projects are always a large part of our unit studies.  We usually end our study with a project or a group of projects.  We love having these on display for a while and remember the fun things we’ve learned.

For the Viking unit, I had the boys each make a long ship and Sophia make a long house with my help.  Of course, there was a ton of other projects and fun ideas I had on my list, but considering the month we’re having, moving, and all that comes with having four kids, we only did a few of what I had planned.  It’s ok though. I am really happy with what my kids came up with.

How to Make a Viking Longhouse

 
You will need:
  • cardboard
  • small dowels (cut into three inch segments)
  • brown and white paint
  • paintbrushes
  • hot glue gun
  • raffia
  • and craft moss
 
 
Start by cutting our your pieces of cardboard.  You’ll need:
  • a front and back piece (the front will have a door cut out)
  • two identical side pieces
  • two identical roof pieces
Paint your sides and front and back pieces with the brown paint.  Add white to create dimension.
 

Add pieces of dowel over the door frame and on the sides of the door as well using the hot glue.  Add three pieces of dowel to the sides of the house on the ends and one in the middle.

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With all four pieces ready to go, hot glue them a base a little larger than the house structure.  Glue all four sides together and then glue to the base. 

Make the roof with your roof cardboard pieces and raffia.  Cut the raffia into pieces about the same length and work in sections to attach to the roof pieces with the hot glue.  Glue the roof pieces on the house.

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Add the moss to cover the cardboard base using the hot glue again. And you’re done! 

 
 

How to Make a Viking Longship

I was lucky enough to find a great tutorial for this online.  The boys used cereal boxes to create their longships and they were so simple to do! You can find the instructions here.

 

 Viking Village Model

This was a really fun on-going project.  The boys worked on this in their free time and it was perfect because they could work on it on their own.  I purchased Usborne cut-out models: Make this Viking Settlement and it had everything we needed to create this model (except for a piece of cardboard to put on the bottom.

 

Viking Explorer Maps

I love having the boys draw maps for our unit studies.  This one shows the routes of different Viking explorers.  I make sure they go really slow on these and don’t rush through.  I haven’t done it yet, but I will laminate these so they stay nice.  

The kids also watched some documentaries on YouTube as well.  And that’s it for our Viking unit study!  I am pretty proud of us for finishing this study despite all the craziness lately.  It was more spread out then I had originally planned, but it turned out pretty great.  Hope you enjoyed!

5 Comments

  1. Thanks so much for posting a Viking Unit Study that is not worksheet dependent. We also are project people and this is a great resource!

  2. I'm so glad I stumbled upon this lesson plan on Pinterest! We are just starting to learn about Vikings this next week in history so I scanned the web to find out fun supplemental projects. I love the house and I know my kids will have so much fun creating this project. Thanks again for posting this!

  4. We LOVED learning about Vikings at the beginning of the year. Seeing all your pictures makes me reeeeeeally wish we could do school together! It would be AMAZING!! I don't suppose you want to sell the house you just bought and move to Montana?

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