Daily activity 116-120: Behind the Doors of a Palace

August 31, 2020

This week’s theme:

Unsolved Mysteries – Behind the Doors of a Palace

This week’s colouring in sheet:

Download and print this week’s colouring sheet here. It’s a corgi party at Balmoral castle!

 

Activities for the week:

 

Mon 31st August

Daily Activity 116: Historical Courts

Fact of the day: A royal court was made up of thousands of people, including the royal family, guests, workers in the household, entertainers and bodyguards.

Activity 1:

Watch this video showing the type of dancing European royals and wealthy aristocrats used to do to entertain themselves in the 1600s. Being able to dance was considered an important skill for any member of the upper class! Social dances in royal courts were often elegant with complicated patterns of people weaving between each other.

Can you create your own royal court dance? Try using some of the movements in the video and make sure you move all around the room! Maybe try dancing with somebody you live with and move towards, away and around each other.

Activity 2:

Royal banquets have always been very exciting and lavish. When King Henry VIII was King, in the Tudor times, he would be served meats and birds such as venison, swan, peacock, heron, porpoise and seagull. Forks weren’t invented, so they ate with a knife and their fingers!

Design a menu fit for a King or Queen – will you have a starter, main course and dessert or serve even more courses? Make sure to decorate your menu, perhaps it could match the gold and silver dishes that would be present at a Tudor feast, or the elaborate flower decorations that would be at Queen Victoria’s banquets in the 1800s.

Activity 3:

Court jesters were part of the royal court in the Medieval and Renaissance times, and their job was to entertain guests with jokes, magic tricks, songs and music, acrobatics, and dancing. Why not make a court jester’s hat and see if you can entertain other people in your house? Here are some joke ideas:

 

Knock! Knock!
Who’s there?
Queen?
Queen who?
Queen your room. It’s filthy!

 

Why did the queen go to the dentist?

Answer: To get crowns on her teeth.

 

Why is England the wettest country?

Answer: The queen has reigned for years!

 

Activity 4:

A fanfare is a flourish of music played to announce the arrival of the King or Queen and is often played on trumpets because trumpets used to be associated with royalty. Have a listen to these examples of fanfares from fiction and real life, then see if you can come up with your own!

Why not try using your fanfare when someone important to you arrives. You could use it when a friend comes to visit, or someone in your house enters a room!

 

 

Tuesday 1st September

Daily Activity 117: Palaces around the world

Fact of the day: The largest palace in the world is the Royal Palace of Madrid; it has 3,418 rooms!

Activity 1:

Take a virtual tour of Buckingham Palace, England, the Palace of Versailles, France, Schonbrunn Palace, Vienna, or Topkapi Palace, Istanbul.

Activity 2:

Depending on where you are in the world, the traditional royal dress can be very different, but always spectacular and impressive, especially the crowns and jewels! Can you make your own crown jewels – why not use tinfoil to make your crown shiny or add glitter for some extra sparkle!

Here are some examples of crowns from around the world: British crown jewels can be visited in the Tower of London. Albania’s crown of Skanderbeg is from the 15th century! The Holy Crown of Hungary is the country’s official coronation crown. The crown jewels of Ireland were stolen in 1907 and still no one knows who did it!

Activity 3:

Design and build your own palace! Take inspiration from some palaces around the world:

Will it have lots of different buildings like the Forbidden City in Japan? Will it be a bright colour like the Winter Palace in Russia? Will it be built on a hill like the Potala Palace in Tibet?

You could build your palace out of anything you like! Lego, clay, card, sand, etc.

 

 

Wednesday 2nd September

Daily Activity 118: The Royal Family

Fact of the day: There has been a British monarchy (King or Queen and royal family) for around 1200 years – in that time there has been 61 rulers.

Activity 1:

The British Royal Family has quite a big family tree. Can you create your own family tree? You could use photos of your family members, and you could even draw it onto an image of a tree.

Add-On Activity:

The line of succession decides who will take over the role of King or Queen in each generation. Normally, it follows the eldest child and any of their children, before going to the next oldest child and their children. Can you follow the line of succession on the royal family tree (above)? It goes: The Queen -> The Prince of Wales -> The Duke of Cambridge -> Prince George of Cambridge -> Princess Charlotte of Cambridge -> Prince Louis of Cambridge -> The Duke of Sussex -> Master Archie Mountbatten-Windsor… and on!

Can you follow a line of succession on your own family tree? Who would be first line for the throne? Where would you be Prince or Princess of?

Activity 2:

The first known royal portrait painted in person is of King Henry VII, in 1505. When a King or Queen took to the throne, a state portrait would be commissioned to present them to their subjects. Paintings were based on how the King or Queen wanted to be seen by their people and would include specific objects to represent certain qualities and characteristics. Here are some examples:

This painting of King George III includes a column to show his strength. This print of Elizabeth I shows her holding an orb and spectre as symbols of her power. This portrait of Queen Elizabeth II (our current queen) was painted to celebrate her coronation, and the embroidery of olive branches on her robe symbolises peace.

Can you draw or paint a royal portrait of yourself or someone you know? What qualities might they like to show in the painting and how could you show them? For example, someone could show they are well travelled by including a world map or globe in their portrait, or you could include an instrument to show they like music.

Activity 3:

Imagine you’re meeting a member of the royal family – how do you greet them?! There are some traditions and rules of how to address royal family members– try some out!

The King: ‘Your Majesty’

The Queen: ‘Your Majesty’ with a curtsy or bow (though a handshake is also accepted)

The Emperor: ‘Your Imperial Majesty’ with a curtsy or bow. In Japan, where there is the last ruling emperor, your bow or curtsy should lower you below the Emperor, as a sign of respect.

The Prince or Princess: ‘Your Royal Highness’

The Duke or Duchess: ‘Your Grace’

 

 

 

Thursday 3rd September

Daily Activity 119: Queen Elizabeth II

Fact of the day: Queen Elizabeth II is the longest reigning monarch in British history; she has been Queen of England for 68 years!

Activity 1:

The Queen of England’s coronation took place on 2nd June 1953. The ceremony is a huge and joyous event with lots of music: here is a list of the music played at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. Create a playlist of music you would have played at your coronation if you were being crowned King or Queen. Think about how you would want your music choices to make you feel: happy, powerful, excited, calm? Play your choices and move grandly around your house pretending to address your subjects!

Activity 2:

In the Summer, the Queen hosts garden parties in the Buckingham Palace gardens. Apparently, at each garden party around 27,000 cups of tea, 20,000 sandwiches and 20,000 slices of cake are consumed! Hold your own garden party with people you live with. You could dress up in smart clothes, hang up bunting, eat cucumber sandwiches and cake and drink lots of tea!

Activity 3:

Imagine you were King or Queen for the day, what would you do? Why not write or draw a diary entry imagining all the things you would do as King or Queen – did you attend any events, like a royal ball or afternoon tea? Did you have any important meetings with the Prime Minister? Did you play with the Queen’s royal corgis?!

Activity 4:

In history, Kings and Queens used to have more power than our Queen does now to make rules that their subjects had to follow. If you were King or Queen, what rule would you enforce? Would it benefit everyone in the country?  Write your rules down and decorate them.

 

 

Friday 4th September

Daily Activity 120: Fictional Royals

Fact of the day: In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts has a quick temper and is famous for shouting ‘Off with their head!’ at the slightest offence!

Activity 1:

The Queen of Hearts is a character in Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In Wonderland, she liked to play croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs. Try making your own croquet set and play like the Queen of Hearts.

Activity 2:

The Queen of Hearts is from a pack of playing cards, and there is a rhyme about her and the other royal cards:

 

The Queen of Hearts

She made some tarts,

All on a summer’s day;

The Knave of Hearts

He stole those tarts,

And took them clean away.

The King of Hearts

Called for the tarts,

And beat the knave full sore;

The Knave of Hearts

Brought back the tarts,

And vowed he’d steal no more.

 

Why not act out the poem adding actions and sound effects?

Activity 3:

The legend of King Arthur has been told for centuries, and there are so many stories surrounding him that none are considered the ‘original’ or ‘correct’ one! One of the most famous stories is of King Arthur is the Sword in the Stone: Arthur was the only person who could pull the sword out of the stone, revealing him to be the true King of England!

Make your own sword using cardboard, stand it up between 2 pieces of furniture like it’s stuck in a stone and pretend to pull it out like King Arthur!

Activity 4:

The White Witch described herself as ‘Her Imperial Majesty Jadis, Queen of Narnia, Chatelaine of Cair Paravel, Empress of the Lone Islands’ and was the evil ruler of Narnia in C.S.Lewis’ story The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. She put Narnia into a state of eternal Winter, with no Christmas! The evil Queen would turn her subjects to stone if they did not obey her – play a game of musical statues, making sure to freeze when the music stops so the White Witch doesn’t catch you out! Here are some royalty themed songs you could use: Dancing Queen, ABBAKiller Queen, QueenRoyals, Lorde.

 

 

Why not take a photo of any of the activities you’ve tried this week and share it with us? You can share it on our FacebookInstagram or Twitter or send it to melanie@purplepatcharts.org and we’ll put it online for you!

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