LBG made a very interesting point recently whilst watching one of her favourite CBeebies programmes, Mike the Knight.
“Girls can be knights too, can’t they?”
“Of course they can, darling” was my lightning-fast response.
Which got me thinking about children’s programmes in general and CBeebies more specifically, since that is the channel that we watch almost exclusively. There seems to be quite a strong leaning towards the more traditional gender roles across CBeebies:
Mike The Knight features a boy knight, whilst his sister Evie is training to be a witch
Bob is a Builder, and although Wendy is his sidekick, she started as his secretary
Octonauts and Rastamouse both have females in their crew, but the coolest character is male.
Tommy Zoom repeatedly saves the world. With a dog. Not that dogs aren’t awesome, but can girls save the World.
Likewise the new Tree Fu Tom is repeatedly saving the day in his boy-saves-the-day way.
What do the girls do? Dirt Girl grows stuff (although so does Mr Bloom,) Katie cooks stuff (better than Big Cook and Little Cook), Rosie lives in a peachy world. Where are the female superheroes, knights and day-savers? I was brought up with a female Prime Minister and a Queen, and encouraged to be anything I wanted by my parents. Admittedly I am happy to assume the traditional role of child-carer because DH rocks and has a super career. But that doesn’t mean I can’t encourage my girls to be whatever they want to be.
But I digress. Girl Knights need shields.
So I cut a shield shape from some corrugated card, and we covered it in foil. I added a corrugated handle at the back- I rolled some card into a handle shape and stuck it on with a glue gun before covering with tape for added security. Then I used some of the gorgeous Dots and Spots tape to put on a St George’s cross, and left LBG to decorate her shield with lots of stickers.
She was delighted with her finished shield and we spent the rest of the afternoon playing Girl Knights and Dragons. The dragons, of course, were purple. The stickers were mostly pink, but that didn’t make her any less a Knight.
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St George’s Day is on 23rd April.
In addition to a shield, your knight may need a Fire-breathing Dragon to fight,
or a flag of St George tabard to wear
A great book to go with this activity is The Paper Bag Princess
Jane and the Dragon is a great show on PBS. Well, I don’t know if it’s still on the air or not, but you can YouTube it. There’s also a great book called “Dragon Slippers” that you would enjoy reading. I don’t know how old your daughter is (I just found this post pinned on Pinterest and have never visited your blog before). Dragon Slippers is the first in a trilogy by Jessica Day George, but I’ve only read the first one.
Similar theme to my pondering on feminist fiction for my older kids. It really is ubiquitous isn’t it?
it is. It was. Will it always be? That’s my philosophising done for the day 🙂
LOVE it! What a great post and idea for girls everywhere! Who says they have to be the damsel in distress?! 🙂 I made a shield for my daughter as part of God’s armor during our family bible time and she had a great time with it! I posted about it here: http://theiowafarmerswife.blogspot.com/2012/02/family-bible-time-armor-of-god.html Love how yours turned out!
My daughter will love this – thanks! She is really big into being a real live super girl lately & I am sure a shield will come in very handy.
Oh goodness I don’t think I’d ever given any serious thought as to the gender stereotyping on Cbeebies. but you are right, the women do house based activities and the men do all the cool stuff. Oh dear. Just as well we have Netflix – my son is currently obsessed with Dora the explorer – at least she has adventures and rescues things. The shield your daughter made is really beautiful, but before you encourage her to go and fight dragons, has she read “When the dragons came” by Lynne Moore. She might have second thoughts about killing them, they can be really useful apparently! Thanks for linking to Kids Co-op.
That really is just too adorable, and I have to admit I’ve never seen a girl’s shield, but I love it! If boys can fight dragons, then girls certainly can too! thanks so much for sharing on craft schooling Sunday!