Currently we are studying the Middle Ages, which I’ve always enjoyed. I love bringing history to life, so I figured it would be exciting and entertaining to figure out a way to joust at home. Obviously, having us actually dress up and joust seemed a bit time consuming and laborious, so we decided to use Ken dolls.
How to Joust at Home
As with most things, it is important to understand what you are trying to recreate before actually doing so. We started out with watching this video: Full Metal Jousting – The Rules of the Joust | History – YouTube. Then it led us to some videos about modern day jousting tournaments, which were pretty cool.
Once you have a basic understanding of the rules and how things work, you can get your supplies together.
In any jousting tournament there needs to be some strapping knights. I apologize ahead of time for the Ken dolls not having clothes on. My kids didn’t want to go through the Barbie stuff to properly dress them under their armour.
Using old cardboard boxes, I had the kids create armour. The important element they needed to include was the padding on the left shoulder, as that is the target for the lance.
We used dowel rods for the lances. I had the kids use a combination of rubber bands and tape to attach them to the knights.
Now for the Tournament…
If your kids are enjoying armour construction, you can always have them jazz up the horses as well. Since we had to share horses, we just opted for the knights and their armour.
I used a pool noodle to serve as the “list” (I learned that term from a video;), and painter’s tape worked great as guides for the horses.
Before each round, the kids could align their rider how they wanted and adjust the lance as necessary. The rules for our battles were that once the horses ran, they couldn’t adjust the lance. Basically, they had to guess where to position it and hope for the best. They were allowed to hold onto one leg of their rider, but if it felt like the doll was falling due to the lance hit on the shoulder pad, then they had to let him fall.
Each round consisted of 3 passes. The winners of the first 2 rounds then battled to become the champion.
I highly advise recording the matches as it is really hard to see initially who hit and if they hit the target. We had to look back on replays to determine the winner almost every time.
We had a lot of fun with this one. Making the armour was probably the highlight for everyone, but it was fun learning about jousting and getting some hands-on experience.
Looking for other ideas for bring history to life? Check out my Great Wall of China or Chariot Wars.