La Forteresse Royale de Chinon: A homeschooler's dream come true

One of the most exciting aspects of homeschooling for me is watching the kids make connections between book studies and real life. Yesterday's adventure will certainly go down in our family's collective memory as an award winning day of connections.

Yesterday morning, we thought it would be nice to take an excursion somewhere in the valley. Steve pulled out the guide book and suggested we try Chinon, a village about 30 km from Tours. There is a castle ruin overlooking the village.

Here is our first view of Chinon from across the river Vienne.

The Celts, then the Romans inhabited this area for centuries before construction of the actual stone fortress began in the 10th century. Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine set up their court here along with their sons Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland in the 12th century. It just so happens that we studied this period extensively this year in history. The girls read numerous books and we had many discussions about this time period. We even watched Peter O'Toole and Kate Hepburn try their hands as the royal couple in "A Lion in Winter." I can't express how exciting it was to walk through the ruins of a castle so rich in history that we had only experienced in books.

We climbed this clock tower on the southern end of the fortress where they have a museum about Joan of Arc. It turns out we studied her too! Chinon is where Joan came to meet Charles VII three centuries after Henry II to persuade him to give her an army. This year we read the story of Joan coming to Charles' court where he swapped places with one of his courtiers to see if she would recognize him (and in case she was there to assassinate him-the little chicken). The story is that she walked straight to the disguised king and recognized him as the Dauphin telling him that she wanted to lead an army in his behalf. That all happened in the throne room of Chinon! It is in ruins now but we were still impressed.

From the tower we watched this storm roll in and pretended it was a besieging army. It was so dramatic and beautiful that we stayed on the tower in the wind and the rain as long as we could before scurrying down to shelter.

For Lucas' history lesson of the day, we played knights, trying to shoot our arrows at the bad guys through the slits in the castle walls.