Viking Spear Craft

Last year as part of our study of Vikings in our homeschool history we created a Viking costume.  Not too surprisingly because they are Vikings, it mostly focused on weapons. We actually added an entire week into our Illuminations schedule* for Viking projects last year.  Today I wanted to share with your our Viking Spear craft.**

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Viking spear craft supplies

Dowel Rods* (the best price I found was at Hobby Lobby, and they had slightly thicker dowel rods, which felt better in your hand as Viking spears and will stand up better to play), cardboard, Duct Tape* (which we buy in bulk because my kids go on building sprees), Mystery of History 2* (if you want some historical context to go with it)

 

How to build a Viking Spear

1.  Do a quick sanding job on the dowel rod to make sure there’s no splinters.  You can probably skip this step, but it’s good to do a quick check, because you don’t want your blood thirsty Viking warriors to be hurt by a stray splinter.

2.  Cut two matching triangles.  Ideally you want a long narrow triangle, but any triangle will work.  If you want the spear head more securely applied, take a moment and take both triangle pieces individually to the dowel rod.

3.  Now start wrapping duct tape around and around until you can see no sign of the cardboard.  End by wrapping some of the duct tape around the dowel rod to make sure you’ve secured it in place.

Pose as the mighty Viking warriors that you are.

 

How did we use the Viking Spear in our history lessons?

Well, for the full import of this lesson you need to head over to Small Arms Combat and see how that lesson played out, because it gave a blow by blow of the benefits and drawbacks of several melee weapons.

Mainly though our Viking spear and the other Viking weapons became part of their play as they went out spouting off bits and pieces from their lessons they’d learned.

 

More Viking history lessons

For a group that we have so many memories and ideas of, they are surprisingly absent from major historical events.  So I don’t have as many posts on them as I’d like to have.

• Viking brooch craft
• Leif Ericson discovered America
• The Discovery of Iceland
• Roman Sword craft (just make the blade longer and you have a Viking sword)
• Duct Tape Warfare (this is a review of a book with infinitely more ideas than I’ll ever post, AND templates)

 

**yes, I know this is not particularly Christmasy, but I felt like writing it, as compared to my 20 other history posts I didn’t want to write