In counterpoint to the last post – here’s Smaller Daughter, armed with round shield, spear, sword and helm of her own manufacture.
In fact, yesterday her class, armed with similar tin-foil weapons, pillaged the fourth grade and selected offices in her elementary school. She got extra credit for trying to capture the principal.
To explain – her fifth grade class is finishing up a world history unit on the viking era of exploration and conquest. They’ve done famous leaders, history, migrations and settlement, culture, literature, technology and crafts. They played with spinning, sprang, kennings, navigation, sagas, and allthings; and finished up by staging their own raid on the rest of the school. They didn’t really burn or steal anything, instead they mostly ran around shaking their weapons and shouting, held some stuffed animals hostage, seized some pre-arranged “treasure”, tossed some papers around and had general kid-amok fun. No actual fourth-graders were harmed.
I was impressed that the unit mentioned sprang, but it turns out that Smaller Daughter’s teacher is a knitter. I should have known.
String-Or-Nothing 
<She got extra credit for trying to capture the principal.>
Why am I not surprised? She’s your daughter,after all. <BG> Who gave her a Nasgul play horse…
–Kathryn