Renaissance Festival 2020

scottsdale homeschool field trip

The Renaissance Festival is always a fabulous time. This year the Cardinals (our homeschool nature and culture outing group) went together on the elementary student day. The festival often has adult type humor so the student day eliminates that and adds a lot of educational type events that wouldn’t be there. Some of the vendors even had reduced pricing knowing that kids don’t come on field trips with endless amounts of money so that was really cool.

But on a downside, many of us noticed that some of our favorite performers had shortened their performances for a K-6 audience and the day was shorter (ending at 2:30pm).

Before the event began I told all the families what we were planning on doing (I had researched the map ahead of time) and encouraged the families to do what worked best for them. We didn’t all stay together but did meet up at different points (as you’ll see in the jousting match all the HLSPV families together!) So that made the day extra special and fun. All in all, I felt like the student day was a really perfect day for us.

This is what I like! Arriving early! Checkout that parking lot! That’s me and the littles walking up. We arrived 45 min early (kind of a first for us!) but this is the way I want to roll! We were second in line plenty of time to go to the bathroom and everything fell into place perfectly! SO worth it!
Excited for the annual Ren Fest! Wouldn’t miss it!
Baby escapee while we wait in line for gates to open! She thought it was funny to run away!
The festival king and queen and the princess and prince welcoming us
Our first educational stop (this one isn’t here normally) ASU students teaching us about renaissance science
The science of fireworks! How to use different elements to make fire change color
Petting a crocodile!
Watershed management demonstrated flooding
Learning how to properly greet the queen
Our noble knight! Watching the jousting match
Highlands Latin PV in the house! Go green knight!
Learning how to press coins! The weight of several elephants comes crashing down on the metal and imprints the coin design. The kids very much wanted to get coins of their houses as they had one for Aries, Aquila, Leo, and Pegasus! But the line was long so we kept moving.
Lady Tess was a delight. The boys went exploring but the girls and I stayed to learn about how a lady (a girl or woman of wealth) would have been dressed in renaissance times.
She had the little mannequin next to her that she would dress piece by piece explaining the significance of the colors, jewels, fabrics, and layers.
The boys meanwhile snuck off with dad to go watch the sword swallower guy. Oh my! I thought I had planned this to be an educational day!?
The falconry show was a very popular one. Here we saw many birds of prey in flight. This is the great horned owl.
This vulture was SO creepy. He was the largest of all the birds and moved SO fast on the ground and with a really weird (read: disturbing) limp. I do NOT like vultures I have decided!
The whip crack guy’s show was next and fascinating. He is quite incredible with a whip. The noise is very loud!
At the end he even lit the whip on fire!
We couldn’t get out of there without wasting — I mean lovingly spending! –a little money, right? Oh I wish…. LOL
Here they are admiring their faces in the mirror.
The little princess fairy got wings as her souvenir. The lady that sold us these will forever become an inside joke to Derek and I. She was trying to sell us SO hard on the $30 wings that would last (like she was borderline offended) and……after spending $20 on face paint I just wanted the cheap wings. Sorry lady! They don’t need to last until her wedding day! Gimmee the cheap ones! 🙂
All in all – a really wonderful day!

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