The history of Europe was marked by centuries of war.  Each century there were bloody conflicts.  Ultimately, the conflict finally exploded and cost millions of lives.  It is crazy to think that one event could have lead to this history.  That seems to be the case.  Few Europeans remember the battle, but the Romans would never forget.  It was a conflict that divided chunks of Europe.  It was imprinted in European consciousness for centuries.  The conflict Europe endured can be traced to one place: Teutoburg Forest.  It was here that the Germanic tribes massacred a legion of Roman soldiers. 

Germanicus came to the site because he wanted revenge.  What he found shocked him deeply.  The forest ground was littered with the bodies of Roman soldiers.  Three Roman legions were wiped out by the Germanic tribes.  Rome was the most technologically advanced armies in the world and they were massacred by barbarians.  Germanicus had to take care of the dead.  He had no time to waste.  He quickly buried the dead men’s bones.  The soldiers' grim task was to bury everyone.  The soldiers did not know whether or not they were burying friend or foe or animals.  They just had to get this job done.  Six years after the battle, the remains were finally buried.

For 2000 years the Teutoburg Forest kept its secrets.  It devastated the Roman Emperor.  He would frequently send patrols to the area.  He went into mourning for the lost legions.  Emperor Augustus wanted his rule to be a successful one.  The Teutoburg Forest massacre was the one blight on his reign.

The Romans did not believe that such a world existed.  They had taken over previously established empires such as Carthage and Egypt.  These empires had laws and taxes in place, so they could easily be absorbed into the Roman Empire.  The Roman expansion into the Germanic territories would become different.  These tribes were not united by one king.  They had no established laws or taxes.  The Romans tried to bribe and set the tribes against each other.

To conquer the Germanic tribes, Varus was sent.  Varus was no general.  He was a lawyer who married into the Emperor’s family.  Both Varus and the Emperor were determined to make the Germanic territories into another Roman province.  In 9 AD, Varus and the legions left for the Germanic interior.  They wanted to Romanize the Germanic tribes.  Varus would use the army to do it.

The Roman governor at the time treated the Germanic tribes as slaves.  The Romans leveled taxes on the Germanic people.  One particular governor was noted for his cruelty and his greed.  He knew the law but not common sense.  This caused resentment amongst the Germans.  While the Romans ruled the Germanic territories, the Germans were biding their time.  They prepared their weapons and waited.  As Varus marched through the Germanic territories he was protected by a group of Germanic soldiers. 

Arminius, one of the Germans, was raised as a Roman.  He was a member of the royal family.  He had Roman citizenship.  Arminius’ encounters with Varus made him rethink his position in the new Roman world.  He witnessed Varus’ stupidity and started to plan.  He slowly and carefully started to unite the Germanic tribes.  That was a challenge because the Germanic tribes did not trust each other.  However, to throw off the Roman yoke the Germanic tribes started to work together.

To find out what happened next continue to watch the documentary.

Downton Abbey’s Jim Carter narrates the Teutoburg Forest story.  This is a good documentary for research purposes.  You can take clips from this documentary for a lecture.  If there is an independent study student, then you can recommend this documentary.

You can access the YouTube video here.

One summer treat is ice cream, so why not do a Time Team about the Ice Cream Villa?  The Time Team examines a site near an ice cream factory.  Tony Robinson introduces the ice cream-making amateur archeologists who believe they discovered a Roman villa in a nearby field.  Lloyd Wix, one of the ice cream scientists, talks about what they are finding in the field.  Tony jokes that they have a week to explore the field, in reality, it is three days.

Over the years, there have been plenty of Roman Era finds.  The aerial photographs are showing something in the ground.  This site was producing Roman finds for decades.  There was something present on the site.  The geophysics team goes out on the site. 

Typically, Roman villas were built in a U-shape.  The main house was in the middle of the U was flanked by side rooms.  The foundations of the Ice Cream Villa should give the geophysics team something to find.  Unfortunately, the building that should be found easily is proving to be a challenge.  The results are showing a bunch of noise in the ground.  Stewart Ainsworth, a landscape archeologist, questions why a villa would be built where it was.

In the meantime, Tony examines the finds that have come out of the field.  They have found over a ton of Roman material.  Helen Geake and Philipa Walton are examining the artifacts that were discovered.  There were pieces of jewelry and a lot of coins found.  It was the largest discovery of Roman coins in the countryside.

Phil Harding digs out a test pit.  Geophysics is proving to be a challenge for everyone.  The results are confusing.  Tony discusses how closely the field was examined.  So Time Team had no option but to dig a test trench.  They are making quite a few discoveries in the trench.  They open up a second trench to look for a ditch.  Then a third trench is opened.  The first day is proving to be a disappointment.  Tony, Lloyd, and a geophysicist go over the map that Lloyd created of the field.

With Lloyd’s map, they extend trench three.  It was the spot where Lloyd and his team found a high amount of archelogy.  They are finding more archeology in the trench.  Stewart looks for the roads that would have connected the villa to the main roads.  He eventually finds the road that connected the villa to the main road.  They add a fourth trench based on what the local archeologists discussed.  Everything has gone wrong with this dig.  The Time Team is not finding a building. 

To continue to learn more about the mysterious Ice Cream Villa, continue to watch the episode.

This is a humorous episode.  It almost seemed it was anarchy on the field.  There were parts of it you could hear Tony’s exasperated voice.  At the start, the archeologists and geophysics team are frustrated with the results they are getting.  Almost everything was exclaimed with “you haven’t found the villa.”  Everyone was convinced that there was a villa in the field.  However, they could not find a building on the field.  They found evidence of life, but not the house that the life was lived at.

This episode can be shown in both history and science classrooms.  For a science classroom, it could prompt discussion on why the scientific method fails or why the tools could fail.  Everything could go wrong with this dig, went wrong with this dig.  It would be a good example of why things fail, despite overwhelming evidence.  The evidence the Time Team was finding was confusing.

You can access the YouTube Video here.

Good morning!  Today I will feature Time Team: An Incredible Discovery in Turkdean.  Tony Robinson starts the episode in the field explaining that there was something large in the field.  During a dry period, a farmer saw the outlines of something massive in the ground.  It was so massive that he decided to draw out what he saw.  Another amateur archeologist spotted lines from a helicopter.  The lines follow the plan for a Roman Villa.  The Team has three days to find out what is in the ground.  Tony believes that three days will not be enough for the team.

Photos from the site show clear lines in the ground.  Tony wonders why they are seeing clear lines.  Mick explains that it is from dead grass on top of the wall.  He demonstrates this idea by walking the field.  The wall underneath the grass is killing it.  However, the Time Team still needs to plan where they are going to put their trenches.  They sent out the geophysics team and go over the site.  The field is mapped and geophysics results are good.  It convinces everyone that there is a large villa in the field.  Then the team puts in two trenches.  They barely take off the turf before they discover walls. 

In the meantime, they also plan on exploring the history of the Villa.  The geophysics hint that there is a large villa underground.  The team goes over the plans for previous villas discovered in England.  Historians compare the villa site to other known Roman Villas.  What they conclude surprises Tony: the team is excavating the biggest villa discovered in England.

The villa was built in the 4th Century.  Whoever built it was rich.  It could have been a local farmer.  It could have been a wealthy Roman immigrant.  Was the villa built piecemeal or was it built over a month?  The team concludes that the site was well selected.  There were springs nearby and the Roman road was not that far either.  It was built in the heart of Roman Britain. 

Mick and Tony go up in a helicopter and take in the field.  Mick narrates what they are seeing.  There are clear white lines in the grass.  It also looks like there are additional buildings on the site.  The villa is looking like a complex.  Both Mick and Tony are surprised at what they are seeing from the sky.

In the meantime, Phil Harding is helping train an archeological apprentice.  He also helps a blacksmith cast a pewter bowl.  England was a source of materials for pewter for the Romans.  The first step in casting a pewter bowl is to make a cast.

Carenza, a second archeologist, continues with the dig.  The Time Team is finding the remains of walls and rooms.  They are finding roof tiles as well.  There is a dog’s footprint in one of the tiles.  Just when they think they have control over the archeology, the geophysics team comes back.  The geophysics is showing that the villa is bigger than what they thought.  There is a second courtyard.

To continue to learn about this villa, watch the episode.  This is one episode I would show in the classroom.  If you do not have time to show it in a classroom, then make it an extra credit assignment.  If a student is studying Ancient Rome for their independent study, then recommend this episode.  This episode builds up as the dig progresses.  It is not a “dreadful” build-up either.  There is a sense of excitement in this episode.  This episode of Time Team is worth sharing in a classroom.

You can access the YouTube Video here.

The City of the God-Kings is part of the Lost Worlds documentary series.  It is about the lost temple city of Angkor Wat.  It was discovered by a French naturalist.  He was looking bugs but stumbled onto something much better: Angkor Wat.  At the time there was little known about Angkor Wat until the discovery of Chinese manuscripts talking about the complex.  Slowly, some of the mysteries started to be solved.

Lately, there are discoveries about Angkor Wat.  Scientists and historians are coming together to reveal more of its secrets.  Images taken from outer space show a large complex.  It was a huge city, the size of London.  It was one of the greatest structures ever built.  Why was this complex built?  What was its purpose?  Who built the city?  What happened to its people?

Angkor Wat contains endless corridors.  Some of the longest reliefs are found in the structure.   Surveyors using lasers cannot match how precisely this complex was laid out.  It was originally constructed for King Suryavarman II.  It was to be his mortuary temple. 

However, it soon became more.  The site itself is surrounded by a square moat and designed to represent Mount Meru.  Mount Meru is the home of the Hindu gods.  It would become a Buddhist temple.  When the French naturalist discovered it he noted that the temple could rival Solomon’s, was built by the genius of Michelangelo.  Angkor Wat was grander than what Greece and Rome could come up with.  He suspected that it belonged to a grand and sophisticated civilization.  However, at the time he had no proof.

At the time of discovery, only a handful of Buddhist monks and nuns lived on the site.  They had no idea how it was built.  There were stories that it built itself.  Soon explorers started flocking to the site, wanting to solve the mysteries.  The jungle was slowly taken away from the site.  This revealed more and more temples.  They also discovered detailed carvings.  They discovered that two languages were carved into its walls: Sanskrit, a priestly language, and the ancient Khmer language.

Through this translation, Angkor was the capital of the Khmer Kingdom.  Many kings ruled from this seat.  Why was this site chosen for the rulers, nobody knew?  A Chinese emissary’s documents were then discovered.  He wrote about Angkor Wat.  He found it to be a grand city.  He wrote about a major civilization.  He was staying with a family and recorded the daily life of them.  There were times where he had flights of fancy and other times when he was biased against his hosts.  Scholars thought that the emissary’s diaries were myths.  Despite this, scholars used these diaries as a guideline to piece together the puzzle.

The Khmer kingdom was initially made up of small city-states.  They were united by a single emperor.  It was this Emperor that started building Angkor Wat.  Each successive king additional temples in the complex.  It soon became a large religious complex dedicated to Hinduism.  It could be described as a combination of Notre Dame, Westminister Abbey, St. Basile’s, the Haga Sophia, etc.  Eventually, it became a Buddhist temple.  It would remain a Buddhist temple for the majority of its history.

This is an awesome documentary.  In school, we never studied the Khmer Empire or learned about Angkor Wat.  When we started learning about civilizations we focused on the Indus River Valley, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.  That carried over in high school too, only with the addition of the Chinese.  So this documentary would be a good introduction to an additional civilization.

To continue to learn more about Angkor Wat keep watching the documentary.

You can access the documentary on YouTube here.

Time Team is a British archeology series hosted by Tony Robinson.  It aired from 1994 until 2014.  Tony Robinson provides series narration.  Mick Aston or Francis Pryor lead the site archeologists and provide context for the site.  Phil Harding is the lead field archeologist.  Over 20 series the team is joined by a variety of experts who help provide context for the period.  Each expert is appropriate to the site and period.  

Tony Robinson introduces the newest dig.  It is in a field next to a Nuclear Power Plant.  It is intriguing, according to the ariel maps of the site.  The line shows something big in the ground.  What is it?  It may have been a Roman Fort.  It may have been a Roman villa.  Tony has high hopes for the site, fingers crossed.  Or as he says “may the gods be with us.”

In the shadow of a power plant, the team starts their work.  In the 1960s, a Ph.D. student started to work on the site.  Farmers were plowing up Roman remains.  He wanted to know why and he found a Roman wall.  He did not know what it is.  All he found was a building and a mosaic, unfortunately, he did not know what the building was.  The Time Team is going to continue this man’s work.  The man left behind a good record of what he had found.  He seems to have hinted that the building was a villa.

The first step was to figure out where he put his original trenches.  So the geophysics team runs radar and magnetometry around the site to figure out where these trenches were put.  Where the mystery building was located was set in a good farming landscape.  

The magnetometry results are generated and the team examines them carefully.  They may have found the edge of the building.  They thought they found a building, unfortunately, it is not the case.  There is only one clear line that they can see and the rest is just jumbled-up debris.  The results are inconclusive so they start digging.

Once they start digging the first trench, they immediately find a section of mosaic.  Tony is hopeful that they will find more.  They bring out the finds from the original discovery and talk about what these finds could mean. 

In the meantime, tension rises as the first trench is dug.  They find a lot of burning going on in the spot.  It shows that something burned down here.  Was it the building that burned down?  The radar results are getting finalized and it is even worse than the magnetometer results.  This will not be an easy dig.  It will not give anyone a good idea of where to put the next trenches. 

The second trench reveals mortar and then three stones.  They find a Roman wall.  It is good news for the team.  Are these the same walls that the 1960s expedition found?  They will have to investigate. 

There are tantalizing hints that the building in the field was a Roman Villa.  That guess seems impossible because a majority of Roman villas were found in Italy.  The site is revealing that this is not the case.  Is the Roman Mosaic under Phil’s toolbox?  Continue to watch to find out.

Time Team is a fantastic series to show in the classroom.  There are a variety of shows that cover a variety of topics.  Teachers should be able to find something to show in the classroom.  Tony is a humourous narrator who will keep the students engaged with the material.  Phil is also fun to watch as he digs.

You can find this episode of Time Team on YouTube here.

This is the series finale of Tudor Monastery Farm.  Ruth, Tom, and Peter continue to live and work on the Tudor Monastery Farm.  It is September and the beginning of Autumn.  The time travelers are getting ready to close their year out.  The pea crop is harvested and the animals are coming back to the farm.  The barley harvest is ready to be harvested.

The Monastery was the largest landowner in England.  The fields were open and not enclosed by hedges.  Farmers were given land to farm.  Peter commented that it was all hands to the pump when it came to harvesting their crops.  Harvest would have been back-breaking work for the harvest.  Their tools are quickly getting dull from the work.  Tom was surprised to discover that.  Ruth and the women bind the barley into Sheafs.  Every stalk was important and the poor people were allowed to glean leftovers.  Ruth comments on the amount of work that the team had done in four hours and what needed to be done. 

Ruth then prepares the meat for the winter and she makes salt to help preserve their meat.  She learns how to make salts.  Salt was part of the cash economy, you had to buy salt.  Salt was imported from France or Spain, however, there were pockets of Britain that had brine springs.  Salt forms by boiling water.  This salt comes to the top of the water and forms a skin.  Ruth then carefully extracts the salt.  The first gatherings are the cleanest, Ruth tests this theory by throwing eggs into the brine.  The impurities will bind to a protein.  There were different grades of salt, the grey salt was used for household cleaners and the white was used for cheese.

In the meantime, Tom and Peter bring their sheep down back to the farm.  The 1530s would change sheep rearing.  After the dissolution of the monasteries, their land was sold off and landowners started to enclose the land.  The large monastery flocks were then broken up.  It was the last time that there would be big flocks in England.

The team then brings in the barley for storage.  Tom and Peter pick goss to prevent rodents from getting into the barley.  Goss is prickly which will discourage visitors and keep the air circulating underneath the barley.  Peter talks about how prickly Goss was.  He also observes that by taking the harvest in they are taking away the homes of the rodents.  The last of the barley is brought into the farm.  The harvest queen is crowned.

Fall is when the animals are slaughtered and Ruth uses her salt to preserve the meat.  The Tudor butcher formed two-pound chunks of meat.  After butchering, Ruth salts up the meat and then puts it into a brine.  After sitting in a brine for two days the meat would then be taken out and put in a barrel packed with salt.
Ruth prepares the Michelmas feast.  She cooks a goose for the feast.  She talks about when it was appropriate to eat geese.

To continue to learn more about the Tudor Monastery farm, continue to watch this fantastic series.

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom.  If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students.  You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well.  Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture.  You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom. 

You can access the YouTube Video here.  The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.

The monastery and others took care of the poor, rather than the state.  Helping the poor was a social virtue.  It was the measure of how a Christian would be judged.  Hospitality was also high on Tudor’s radar.  The Monasteries helped the poor through the almshouses or providing shelter.  They accommodated everyone.

The monasteries served as a backpacker’s hostel, a nursing home, as well providing a place for the rich.  By hosting the rich, the monasteries could help generate donations.  The team focuses on Tudor Hospitality in this episode.  Their task is to help the Monastery host a rich patron, as well as restore a room for a retired monk.

The boys attend to the pea crop before they can help out with the renovation and hosting the party.  They build bird scarers to help frighten the birds.  In Tudor times, there were bounties placed on birds.  The boys use shells to scare the birds away from the pea crop.

Ruth makes butter in the dairy.  This butter will be used for Abbot’s feast.  She separates the cream from the milk and starts making butter.  Butter was good for the health in Tudor times.  Everyone had a cow because you could graze the cow on the common land.  After the lands became enclosed and the poor had to rent land.  However, they could not afford to rent the land and butter became the domain of the rich.  This would be an excellent clip to show in an agricultural classroom.  Butter making would be a good experiment to do in the classroom.

Tom and Peter make their way to the room they are restoring.  They tear up the floor as part of the renovation.  They plan to use lime putty to help with the renovation.  They gather limestone and wood to make a temporary kiln.  Limestone was a popular building material in the Tudor Times.  They set the limestone on fire and after the fire burns out they put the burned lime into the water and turn it into putty.  It is a volatile reaction.  The stones will turn to putty overnight.

Ruth cleans out her dairy equipment.  Cleaning was a vigorous affair in the Tudor Times.  They did not use soap.  One weapon in the cleaning arsenal was salt.  Salt killed bacteria.  Then everything was scalded with boiling water.  Finally, they laid their tools out in the sun to kill bacteria.  They knew that the sun worked in sterilizing tools.  She then harvests rushes for the room renovation.  The rushes will be made into mats.  Rushes were an important feature of the Tudor home.  They were used on the floor, baskets, mattresses, and hats.

After making the lime putty, the boys set to work on redoing the floor.  They make the floor out of sand, flint, and clay.  They add curdled milk to the mixture to bind the floor.  The sour milk smell will go away.  After mixing they then start laying the floor. 

To continue to learn more about the Tudor Monastery farm, continue to watch this fantastic series.

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom.  If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students.  You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well.  Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture.  You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom. 

You can access the YouTube Video here.  The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.

It is July and the time travelers are halfway through the year. The peas and barley are thriving. Pigs and sheep are also doing well. Ruth, Tom, and Peter are advised by the monastery about more ways the farmers earned money. The farm’s fortunes and the monastery’s fortunes are very much tied together. The Abbeys were a source of authority for the land.

One way the Tudor Farmers made additional money was through lead mining. Peter and Tom are off to attempt lead mining. They open up an abandoned mine. The mine they open up has not been operated in over 100. Lead mining often provided an extra income for the farmer. This in turn allowed the farmer to afford a few extra luxuries or they could invest in additional livestock. Lead was in high demand, especially from the churches. They used lead in their windows and gutters. After opening the mine Tom and Peter go into the mine.

Ruth finds another way to make money: eel fishing. The monasteries encouraged the people to fast from meat three times a week. Fish and eel made up for the lack of meat-eating. To do this she helps make a basket to catch the eel. Eel traps are made from two cones, one inside another. It was an ancient way of fishing. An eel is also easier to keep alive because you mainly need to keep the eel damp.

Tom and Peter go through the mine through the old tunnels that Tudor miners took. Monasteries granted leases for the Tudor farmer to mine lead. They discuss the history of the mine and mining in the Tudor period. The boys look for silver flecks in the wall. Then they start mining. Lead veins were set at 45 degrees which made working conditions challenging for the Tudor miner. About 50 barrels a day came out of the Tudor mines. The lead is then smelted to get the lead from the rock. They build a Tudor-style kiln to make white coal as well as to melt the lead ore. However, the boys get into trouble due to the wind. How do they solve the problem of their fire collapsing? Tune into Tudor Monastery Farm to find out.

Ruth sets the eel trap with Simon’s help. He is an expert in Tudor fishing. She lays out the traps in the shade because eels are drawn to dark places. She baits them with dead fish, “the stinkier, the better,” she comments. Simon and Ruth then check the eel traps. The first trap did not have an eel. The second trap had eels. Ruth tries to knock them back into the bucket, but since they look like snakes it made her nervous. A portion of the eels that were caught would go to the monastery.

Tudor Monastery farm continues to demonstrate that the Tudors were highly tuned to the natural world. Nature provided the Tudors with the tools they needed. To demonstrate this principle the boys use cotton grass to light the kiln fire. To continue to learn more about the Tudor Monastery farm, continue to watch this fantastic series.

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom. If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students. You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well. Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture. You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom.

You can access the YouTube Video here. The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.

Tudor Monastery Farm is in episode 3.  It is late spring and the farm has been run for two months.  The pig enterprise has been set up.  Ruth, Peter, and Tom sheered their sheep and sold the wool to the monastery.  They then learned how to drive oxen.  Now they focus on food and what the farmer ate.  Bread and ale were a staple of the Tudor diet.  The Tudor people had a high-calorie diet.  Bread and beer were 1/3 of the calories in the Tudor diet.  Since they worked hard on the farm, they were able to burn calories faster.  Ruth comments the only thing missing was Vitamin C but if you had the “occasional leaf” you were good on Vitamin C.  If the barley crop failed, the Tudor farmer could starve.  In the Tudor period, one in four harvests failed.

Religion guided the Tudor farmer in preventing a bad harvest.  Forty days after Easter, the Tudor farmer processed around the farm boundaries to ensure a good harvest.  It was called beating out the bounds.  There were no written parish maps to tell people where their boundaries were.  A second reason why the Tudor farmer processed around the farm was to remind the people of the boundaries.  Ronald Hutton talks about how they got the Tudor children to remember the boundaries.  Boys were often beaten and turned upside down.  After they did that they were given fruit cake as a treat.  The idea was to remember bitterly what a place looked like.

Tom and Peter then discuss the pigs.  It was the earliest form of factory farming.  Farming changed during the Tudor period and instead of being subsistence farming, they were profit farming.  The boys separate the piglets from the mothers to wean them.  The piglets are taken to the woods.  They are fattened up on acorns.  A boar is introduced to the mothers to breed.

In the meantime, Ruth collects wild yeast to make bread and ale.  Her experiment in capturing wild yeast is a success.  The idea was to collect the wild yeasts that were in the air.  Ruth’s experiment is a success.  She then works to spread out the barley on a floor to start the beer-making process.  The next step after spreading it out on the floor is to get it wet.  Days go by and they shovel it into a smaller and smaller pile.  Beer making was an intensive and time-consuming job.  Ruth then transports the barley to the bread oven and continues the ale-making process.  Tudors drank ale and not beer because beer required hops.  Tudor farmers worked from dawn to dusk. 

The only place where time counted was in the monastery. The monks had specific times when to pray, when to go to the chapel and when to eat.   Tom and Peter build a clock for the monastery.

To continue to learn more about the Tudor Monastery farm, continue to watch this fantastic series.

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom.  If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students.  You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well.  Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture.  You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom.  The discussion on Tudor pig breeding would be an excellent clip to show in an agricultural classroom.  Or you could create a science experiment on capturing wild yeast to demonstrate the scientific method.

You can access the YouTube Video here.  The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.

Tudor Monastery farm continues.  Subsistence farming was giving way to farming for profits.  Tudor farmers had an eye on profits.  The monasteries made money from their tenants and now their tenants wanted to make profits for themselves.   It was during this time that farming was changed.  Ruth, Tom, and Peter celebrate Pentecost with a Market day.  Tom and Peter are raising geese to market day.  Tom comments that he is nervous around the geese.  Geese were considered a good source of revenue.  Geese were kept for meat, eggs, and fat.  Tom and Peter hope to make money with them on Market Day.

In 1500, the common lands were not enclosed.  Our time travelers turned their sheep out onto these lands.  Sheep produced thicker fleeces because of the grass the sheep were kept on.  May was the time for sheep shearing.  The time travelers work on making crooks to help drive the sheep from the grasslands back to the farm.  The crooks were invaluable to the Tudor shepherd.  With the aid of a sheepdog Ruth, Tom, and Peter drive their sheep back down to the farm.  It is comedic to watch Tom, Peter, and Ruth drive the sheep down back to their farm.

Tom and Peter wash the sheep.  The farming manuals at the time recommend that the sheep be washed before they sheer them.  They wash their sheep before shearing.  Washing the dirt, dung, and rocks out of a fleece helps the sheering process.  If a sheerer came across a rock in the fleece, the blades could get damaged.  Cleaning the fleece also increases the farmer’s profits because if a fleece is matted with dung it is not usable.

Peter who is feeling unwell with a cold, turns to nature to cure it.  The Tudor garden was seen as a pharmacy.  Many plants could be used to cure what ails the farmer. 

Ruth explores the differences with monastic herds because the sheep could provide different sources of income.  Sheep cheese had started going out of fashion because cows produced more milk.  Ruth milks a sheep to help supplement the farm’s income.  She will use the milk to make cheese.  She works in the dairy and makes sheep’s cheese.  Working in the dairy was considered a woman’s work during Tudor times.  Tudor Dairies were also cleverly designed to regulate temperature so the dairy was the coolest place on the farm.  They were built on the north wall and away from the sun.

Peter works on steam bending wood to make a bench to help sheer sheep.  He has never done it before but is willing to give it a try.  He explains the process of what he is doing to steam bend wood.  He digs a trench, lines it with rocks, fills it with damp hay, and builds a chimney to get the fire going.

Tudor Monastery Farm is an excellent show for the classroom.  If you need a filler for a substitute teacher or just to share some living history with your students.  You can show certain episodes in an agricultural classroom as well.  Grab some clips and use this series in the classroom as part of a lecture.  You are only limited to your imagination when it comes to using YouTube in the classroom.  I would pull clips out from the discussion on the Tudor Dairy or Tudor cheesemaking for an agricultural classroom.  Ruth is an excellent narrator as to why the Tudor Dairy was designed the way it was.

You can access the YouTube Video here.  The worksheets for this series are available on my Teacher Pay Teachers page.