This year for our annual Winterfest project students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades have been creating detailed Coats of Arms to represent either their own ancestry, or an imagined family history. They researched their names and also learned about the rules of heraldry, the way by which people identified their birth order and status in Medieval times. The students designed a crest, or coat of arms, with symbols and images that represented them and colored carefully with markers. They then added a banner at the bottom with either a family name or a phrase. Some students even chose to use a foreign language to signify their heritage. The richly ornamented finished projects will be displayed in the “Medieval dining hall” for the Winter Festival’s feast as well as around the castle walls.