Little House in the Big Woods - Final Week

This is our last week for the book Little House in the Big Woods and our first Prairie Primer unit for fourth grade. We had the opportunity to visit Cracker Country in Florida and we learned a ton while having some prairie fun. J wore her Little Prairie dress all day, even though it was extremely hot! Everyone loved her dress, some though she worked at Cracker Country, and others invited her to work when she turned 13! She was super excited about this trip. I am glad we made the time to go.

J started of our visit to Cracker Country by dipping candles. This was definitely something I wanted to do for our unit but never got around to buying all of the supplies.

Kaleb and J with their hand dipped candles.

J washed some clothes with the washboard and learned to iron. She couldn't believe how heavy the iron was! I couldn't believe how long it took to heat up. I am so thankful for electricity:)

J sat in on a school lesson in a 100 year old schoolhouse with a 100 year old school teacher (according to the teacher). Hands in her lap and ready to listen:)

We visited the Cracker Country printing press and received a newspaper. J and Kaleb are reading the paper.

J tried her hand at roping cattle....she tried but with no luck. Cracker Country was a great field trip. It was great for our unit on Little House as well as our Florida history unit. I love when things just work out for our school:)

The final installment in the Little House in the Big Woods was to have a Gold Rush party. I made simple horses from paper, gave the kids cowboy hats, and bandanas from the Dollar store.

We ate camp food and panned for gold. They searched for gold nuggets that we hid in our yard and we drank root beer! Fun, fun, fun. The panning for gold was somewhat harder than expected. I bought a kit from Hobby Lobby and it came with the pans and gold/sand mixture. It probably would have been easier if I made the gold/dust mixture with larger pebbles. J enjoyed the activity but Kaleb thought it was too hard. The whole family helped Kaleb fill his gold pouch. So they both ended up with "gold" to keep.

It was a good end to a good book unit. J loved the hands-on activities and I enjoyed them as well. We are on to the Little House on the Prairie. See you soon.