Historical Paper Soldiers

We aren’t big into crafts in my home. With one exception. My boys LOVE making historical paper soldiers. They go to Junior General as frequently as mom allows to print out their armies. Junior General has all kinds of soldiers, from ancient Egyptians to World War 2 and everything in between. If you want to save on printer ink, you can even print them out in black and white and color them in yourself.

This year we are studying the Ancients, and my boys can hardly wait to print out Sumerians, Egyptians, Hittites, Philistines, Trojans, Spartans, and Romans. There are ancient Indian cavalries on elephant back and Phalanxes from Alexander the Great’s army.

It isn’t hard to attach bases to make these soldiers stand up. Some people go all out and use foam core, but we make simple bases out of green cardstock or posterboard. Once you get the hang of it, it’s fairly straightforward.

All the figures are printed in mirror image. Junior General has excellent, simple instructions for making these figures stand up on cardstock bases, as well as photos for people like me who couldn’t figure it out otherwise. My eight year old can attach them to bases with a bit of work, and my 12 year old has it down to a science. Still, they usually want me to do it, since mine look the neatest and I’m quick. If my kids were willing to cut and base all soldiers, I’d let them make them more often, but since I am still typically involved in the process, we save it for special occasions. The main materials needed for making bases is green cardstock and a roll of clear packing tape.

If you are willing to print and base large armies, you can even play simulation games with these soldiers. Junior General has basic gaming rules as well as many simulations. My oldest son enjoys these games, which are done in such a way as to typically give a historical outcome. From what I gather, the game play simulates the real outcome of actual battles by using dice, rules, etc. to typically prejudice the outcome according to historical fact. It is a great way to learn more about historical battles and I hope we can do more of these simulated battles as the boys get older.

There is an interesting article on Junior General about using historical soldiers in the classroom.
We recently finished our study of Ancient China, and I had my oldest son make up a game based on a battle from China’s ancient history. He looked over a few of the simulations to get an idea of how they were done. Then he wrote some historical background for his game, as well as the rules. We printed up enough soldiers to play the game. This involved math, as he had to figure out how many soldiers he would need in what ratio in order to accurately represent the foot soldiers, archers and cavalry of each army. He also had to figure out how to advantage the winning side a little bit while still keeping the game competitive enough that the outcome was not set in stone. Once he was done, we played the game and then made corrections to game play based on how things worked. He loved this activity and it was great to see the cross-curricular applications as he had to apply math, logic and history skills.

We’ve never been able to figure out how to draw our own soldiers on the computer, but there are even instructions for doing that, for those of you techies out there!

Junior General even has nonhistorical figures, such as elves, dwarves and rangers for setting up a Lord of the Rings battle.

Now that’s a craft a boy can really get excited about!!