"As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness - just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breath it; just warmth and shelter and home folks; just plain food that gives us strength; the bright sunshine on a cold day; and a cool breeze when the day is warm." ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder
When we found out that we would be home-bound for awhile, I knew immediately what I wanted to do with the kids. I wanted to read through the Little House Series. Laura Ingalls Wilder is one of my favorite authors. I love reading her books because they take me back to a much simpler time. She has a way of describing home and everyday life with such fondness and incredible detail. There's no place I'd rather be than home (which is a good thing right now!) and I think Laura felt the same way. I couldn't wait to share a little history and create some fun memories with my kids during our time of isolation!
I purchased The Prairie Primer which is a literature based study using the entire Little House series. It includes ideas for reading comprehension, writing, history, science, art, Bible, living, and more. I have found it to be an INCREDIBLE resource.
We have been reading a chapter a night from Little House In the Big Woods. We've also listened to Alison Arngrim (Nellie) read aloud on her Facebook page. She's also had Almanzo on there reading "Farmer Boy" but we haven't gotten that far :)
I thought I'd share a few things we did as we read through the book! Chapter 1 discussed Laura and Mary's dolls:
"Mary was bigger than Laura, and she had a rag doll named Nettie. Laura had only a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief, but it was a good doll. It was named Susan. It wasn't Susan's fault that she was only a corncob."
The girls made corncob and corn husk dolls to play with that night. They even used a paper towel to wrap them in for awhile until finding a handkerchief downstairs. They drew faces on them and planned on making some clothes...but we haven't gotten that far! They surprisingly carried these around everywhere for a couple days!
In Chapter 2, Laura, Mary and Ma make butter. So, we gave that a shot too! Girl - you got to shake a lot for some butter! We finally ended up with our butter and buttermilk.
Chapter 3 was mostly about Pa cleaning and loading his gun, so we took some time for gun safety. The hubby had a muzzle loader so he took it apart, cleaned it and reloaded it much like Pa. He gave them some gun safety tips along the way. Then we went outside afterwards for some shooting practice.
The kids loved that the prayer Laura and Mary pray in Chapter 6 was the same prayer they pray alot at night. "Now I lay me down to sleep..."
In Chapter 7, Pa and Grandpa collect sap to make maple syrup. I was thinking it was probably too late for us to be able to actually collect it. BUT...we did have a cold snap come through about this time so I thought maybe it would get the sap running! So we did some research on how to tap trees and ordered some taps from Amazon. While we were waiting on them to be delivered, we watched an episode of one of my favorite shows FarmHER where they visit a maple farm and show the process of making maple syrup. We also took a couple walks over our property looking for trees to tap. This was quite a learning experience for me too! There was a lot of discussion first about what types of trees would be good for making syrup. Then, we had to identify those trees. Then once we found the trees we tried to determine which ones would be the best for tapping. We thought we had found one down by the creek. It seemed to just have sap oozing out of it. However, before we tapped we decided to ask my Dad who is a logger and pretty much a tree expert. He came down to check out the tree and said it actually had the sap oozing out because it was dying...NOT the one we wanted to tap! When our taps arrived, we tapped 5 maple trees and it ended up not even really mattering because apparently we had waited too late and never got any sap. (Boo!) I guess the snow still being on the ground in our book, should have been a good clue we had waited too long. Anyway, we learned a lot through the process and there's always next year!
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| "C" helping drill a hole in the tree |
In Chapter 8, Laura and her family visit her Grandpa. They ride through the snow in a one horse open sleigh (complete with sleigh bells-how fun would that be?) and Pa showed Laura the different tracks in the snow as they rode. I printed off some common animal tracks to use as a guide and we took a hike around the house to identify some different tracks. We saw cow (of course), horse, some type of dog (our dog had not walked that way) or coyote tracks. Later in the week on a walk we also spotted some turkey tracks. Other than tracks, we also found some cow bones.
This chapter was also a fun one because there was a barn dance after all the maple syrup was made. Pa played his fiddle while everyone danced. Grandma and Uncle George even had a competitive little dance-off! (If you want to know who won you'll have to read the book ;) I found Pa's Fiddle:Charles Ingalls, American Fiddler on Spotify and we did a little dancing in the living room!
We also kept a journal throughout the book and the children took turns writing different things down. I can't even begin to tell about all the other great discussions that we had. The Prairie Primer does a great job including scripture, character or even manner lessons with every chapter which led to some wonderful character building conversations. This is also my third time to read this book and I don't remember there being so much rich detail about food in it. It's funny how different things stand out to you when reading at different times. Knowing where my food comes from and what I'm putting in my body has become very important to me (although you wouldn't know it by watching me during this quarantine) and this book made it SO easy to discuss those things with my kids! Of course in the middle of the big woods, they had no choice but to be self-sufficient, especially with their food and other necessities. We not only discussed butter and syrup; but oats, meat, cheese, johnny cake, hasty pudding (which we are still planning to try), and more! Preserving was also a necessity for them. The book went into great detail about preserving meat. We discussed bacteria, antibiotics and Louis Pasteur. We watched this youtube video for a quick biography on Louis Pasteur. We were discussing and learning about germs, antibiotics, and vaccines right as COVID-19 was really beginning to be diagnosed near us.
We not only learned so much from this book, we also created some memories that I know we will all carry with us! Home, self-sufficiency, food, keeping safe from bacteria and viruses...Laura's writings and the topics brought up in the book were totally relatable to us right now!
“She thought to herself, "This is now." She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.”
We can't wait to dig into Little House on the Prairie and see what all experiences come with it next!!
