As an extra to J's fourth grade curriculum, we have been working through The Prairie Primer and reading the Little House series. J and I have had so much fun doing this. We had a full week of Little House in the Woods activities. We spent the week finishing up some experiments and activities that we had on our list. We also finished reading our first book - yay!
We always start our Prairie Primer activities by reading the selected chapters for the day.
One such reading mentioned Ma making cheese from whey. So, J worked on separating the curds and whey from milk. The experiment came from Go Science Girls (link below). It was relatively easy and I had all of the ingredients on hand.
Here's a picture of the milk separating after several minutes on the stove.
J wasn't so sure about tasting them though. Laura said in the book that she loved eating the whey and they squeaked in her teeth. (sounds good, doesn't it?)
After some encouragement and a taste test of my own, she found that they weren't half bad. We saved some to share with daddy when he came home. She did find, though, that they didn't squeak in her teeth!
Another project on our to-do list was to make bread. I truly wanted to try the salt rising bread that Ma made but I found this easier recipe of making bread in a ziplock bag. It was easy enough and tasted pretty good. The recipe came from Your Home Based Mom (link Below).
Pa does some whittling in the book and I thought it would be another good project for J to complete. Instead of whittling wood, she worked with Ivory soap which was relatively easy to carve away. She needed something with a point to carve the soap, so I gave her a golf tee. Worked well.
I had her choose a simple design for her carving, so she picked the letter J. It was an easy project which she finished in about an hour. I stressed for her to take her time otherwise she might carve too much of her design.
Lastly, in one chapter Laura and Mary each receive a cookie when they visit their neighbor. But they had a dilemma on how to equally share two cookies with three people. So, I had J cut out paper cookies and figure out the best way to make the sharing equal.
We finished Little House in the Big Woods as well as most of the projects on our to-do list. Most, I say, because you could truly find a ton of cool activities for this book. We are going to finish up the Woods unit with a field trip and a small party. Then, on to Little House on the Prairie. Thanks for reading.
Links
Go Science Girls - has a curds and whey experiment. Ma used the whey to make cheese. This also came in time for our Little Miss Muffet rhyme.
Your Home Based Mom - has the bread in a bag recipe.
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