We have been looking at the Tudor period in a lot more detail and although I found lots of information and activities on Henry and his children I did not find that much on his different wives. And the topic of his wives is something that fascinates my kids, they wanted to read a bit more about how the wives differed, in terms of their backgrounds, personalities and their relationship with Henry.
So to get us started on the wives topic I downloaded the 6 comprehensions from Twinkl – Yes they have a different comprehension for each wife. Here the links – Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr.
I love comprehensions because the kids are reading, having to apply their understanding and they practice writing and spelling when they write out the answer. So as far as activities goes a good comprehension is a great way to cover quite a bit in one go but I do always try and make a point of finding comprehensions on topics that they find interesting and want to actually learn a bit more about so these were perfect for the current interest. (I must mention for each comprehension Twinkl have created 3 different versions so you can use them for kids of different ages or abilities. And answers are included).
We did our comprehensions in order of the wives and although they are focused on each wife you get to see how Henry changed and evolved over time. A lot of detail comes through in these comprehensions, including how his relationships with his kids changed from Mary being shunned to finally him including both his daughters in the line succession.
My oldest actually used the comprehensions in a slightly different way. She used them as fact pages and ended up creating her own table comparing the different wives. They have categories like background, personalities, relationship with the kids, outcome (ie divorced, died etc). I had never thought of using a comprehension in this way before but in this instance it worked really well and ended up becoming a brilliant History activity (she has since gone to to research a few things about the wives in a bit more detail).
If you are learning about the Tudors we recommend spending a bit of time on the wives. It is great to learn a bit about each wife and their personalities so the kids start seeing them as individuals in their own right.
Admin – This is not a sponsored post, I am just sharing a resource that we found useful.
ofamily learning together 