My Kind of Homeschooling :: Knights of Veritas

We were fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time a little while back.  Figuratively AND literally.  Cookie's stuck in history, reveling in knights and damsels and castles.  Coincidentally, a local bookstore, where you can purchased used books by the pound no less, was celebrating the Hobbit movie announcement with a "Tolkein Tea".  They hired a group, The Knights of Veritas, from Moses Lake, WA to come for a demonstration. 

The Knights presentation really debunks the myths of sword fighting and medieval armour that Hollywood has engrained in our minds.  The presenters taught us not only the words for the 4 different attack stances, but also took us through the geometry of a real sword fight.  Basically, you always want your defense to end with your sword's point threatening your rival...and they taught us which movements would get us a victory through slow-motion sword fighting by letting the audience tell them their next move should be.  Then once we worked it all out, the sword fight would commence in real time. :)

Below is my favourite fight of the day.  The one that wasn't deconstructed, so we had no idea what was going to happen!

We were able to see what it takes for these gentlemen to dress in their armour piece by piece; we even got to touch real mail.  The mail was amazing--interwoven chains that were riveted together.  During the demostration, once they had both put on their mail, one of the men took his sword and started beating the edge of it against the chest and back of the other man without wounding him.  Completely amazing!

 

Piece by piece,

an armoured knight

was assembled in front of our eyes.

Then they got down to business. :)



It was a wonderful, informative, and enjoyable presentation.  Cookie gave it a 10 out of 10 rating, whether she gave it that because she got to hold a sword after the presentation, i am not sure. :)

Hoping you will someday get to see the Knights of "Truth" in your area!