One of the things I want my kids to understand when we study wars is war is sometimes necessary, but it is not glorious. That is a hard thing to teach to young boys. Young boys see glory and adventure, but that’s not what the trenches were like in World War 1. So I create a trench simulation for World War 1 for our history lessons.
After all this is a common sight with my boys, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I want them to grow up and want to protect, that is a natural instinct. But, you also want your boys to know when it is right and when it is wrong, and when to walk away from a fight.
So we simulated trench warfare, so they can find out what was it like in the trenches of World War 1.
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Supplies for an indoor trench warfare simulation
as many pillows as you can get, socks or bean bags (here’s how I make bean bags), and some Nerf Guns (my boys currently like this Zombie gun* and Nerf Ball gun, discontinued they now have this Mega Dart Gun)*
Preparing for your Trench Warfare simulation
First take some socks and roll them up to simulate mortars. This could be why I haven’t been able to find socks for the past 2 weeks, I will blame it on this history lesson.
Next take all those pillows you grabbed and build up your trench. I set a 5 minute time limit. Originally I was going to have the kids build trenches in our backyard for their army guys and fight with that, but we got a big rainstorm, so it was all mud. Nevermind that plan.
Split into two teams, defenders and attackers. Defenders get the mortars, and attackers will be charging the trench. This lets you understand what it’s like from both sides.
Running your trench warfare simulation
To make it more like the mortars being fired, the defenders had to throw their mortars facing backwards. When they ran out of mortars they could turn around and shoot their Nerf guns.
The attackers were allowed to shoot their Nerf guns facing forward, but once they’d been hit, they had to “die.” This of course meant lots of dramatic sounding death scenes.
Here’s what we discovered in our World War 1 trench warfare simulation:
1. It’s hard to hit your target with mortars, but it does make the attackers more wary because they don’t know when they’ll be hit.
2. It’s hard to take a trench. You will suffer a lot of casualties. Our simulations never successfully managed it.
3. Guns are accurate, and if you have a good supply of bullets, you will kill your opponents.
4. Not all guns are accurate. One of our guns was the ball shooter, it was not as accurate, and did not have as many bullets. That is a disadvantage.
After we talked through what we thought about the simulation, I printed off some of the pictures, and the kids all wrote about what they learned.
I loved Princess’ sentence: War is scary. I did not like being shot at.
I think that sums up what most soldiers would say pretty darn well.
More World War 1 ideas
coming soon
Erika says
February 11, 2013 at 8:38 amI really enjoyed this post. My husband and I were just discussing the other day how tricky it can be to teach a good deal of history and to do it age appropriately – so much of human history is in truth violent and involving war.
Ticia says
February 11, 2013 at 8:42 amI know. It’s a struggle, but I also believe that if we don’t teach them about our history than they will not have the proper tools to understand what is going on right now. We just finished reading about the 20s, and I’m seeing the seeds laid then for many of the problems we are having now. It’s been rather fascinating for me.
Erika says
February 11, 2013 at 8:44 amI can absolutely see that – I look forward to reading more about your approach – don’t look now, but I’m getting ideas 😉
Natalie says
February 11, 2013 at 8:39 amDespite the war being scary, I have a hunch that the boys thoroughly enjoyed this lesson.
Ticia says
February 11, 2013 at 8:43 amYes, they did. Which wasn’t quite my intent, but they did get that war was scary and many people died. So, part of the lesson was learned.
Phyllis at All Things Beautiful says
February 11, 2013 at 9:11 amGreat post! Great idea! Much better than building a trench in the backyard, which is what my boys want to do.
Ticia says
February 11, 2013 at 9:13 amMy boys did too. This seemed like a better long term solution. I don’t think Jeff would have wanted the backyard all dug up……
Jeff says
February 11, 2013 at 9:36 amBe sure of it, I do not want them digging a trench system in the backyard
🙂
Claire says
February 11, 2013 at 5:14 pmHa, ha!! You should get together with my long suffering husband. There are many many things he is absolutely sure he doesn’t want, that nevertheless seem to creep into our homeschool. Mummifying a chicken comes to mind……
Ticia says
February 11, 2013 at 8:16 pmJeff wasn’t too thrilled with our mummified chicken either.
maryanne @ mama smiles says
February 11, 2013 at 3:48 pmI’m glad at least one of your kids understands that war is scary.
Ticia says
February 11, 2013 at 3:52 pmMe too. I think the boys will eventually get it, but they’re young and invincible, and immortal.
Erin - The Usual Mayhem says
February 11, 2013 at 3:49 pmWhat a great way to illustrate the point. I should try this with the gun-happy 5 year old in my family.
We were lucky enough to have a WW2 vet living next door to us at our last place, and he came over and told my older kids stories about what it was like to have to swim underwater and plant explosives on the German subs and try to get back without being caught – he was only a teenager too. The one that got to them, I think, was when he described having to blow up a bridge in France at sunset, knowing that it would kill innocent civilians just out for an evening stroll.
Ticia says
February 11, 2013 at 3:51 pmOh that would get to me too. One of our friends is a vet from the Iraq War, and I’m hoping he’ll make war sound less exciting as well. His main comments are its tedious, and hot, and tiring……..
Joy says
February 14, 2013 at 9:22 pmExcellent way to teach about wars! For us living in an apartment, this will definitely work for us. Thanks for linking up with me!
Julie says
February 15, 2013 at 4:16 amI pinned this. It looks like a great hands-on activity. It must have been awful fighting. There are trenches from WWI less than an hour from our house and I hope to visit them when my daughter is a bit stronger.
Lindsay @ Bytes of Memory says
February 15, 2013 at 9:09 amWonderful hands on activity! I am going to pin this for when we get to a time period with trenches 🙂
Susan Evans says
January 12, 2016 at 10:51 amI love it! What a great hands-on activity for a difficult modern history concept.
Marci@TheHomeschoolScientist says
January 13, 2016 at 1:02 pmThis is great! We just read about trench warfare this morning in our WWI study. Guess we’ll be making our own trenches tomorrow.