We have recently started reading the fifth book in The Little House Series called The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We are continuing with our Little House notebook and if you would like to download the pages that I created, see my post HERE. We are using the Prairie Primer as our base and most of the mini books cover questions from the Primer so you will need a copy of it to complete the notebook pages.
The fifth book is a hard read. You get to experience the super long winter with nothing but snow and ice storms with the Ingalls family. You struggle with them when they run out of flour and potatoes as well as coal for the stove and kerosene for the lamp. You can almost feel the biting cold in the mornings as they struggle to survive.
J is working on her notebook pages for the unit. I am finding that the further we get into the Little House books, the less information there seems to be from the Primer. But it is still good information and J still loves it.
The family ran out of kerosene for their lamp so Ma made a button lamp. She used axel grease to light it. We made our own version of a button lamp but instead used a quarter and some muslin. She wrapped cotton thread around the muslin and we dipped the end in olive oil.
Then, she placed the "wick" into a heat resistant dish with some olive oil at the bottom. We went outside to light it because we weren't sure how it was going to react. After a few tries (windy day), we finally got it lit. It was smoky so I am definitely glad I didn't light it inside. And the smell wasn't that great but it did work. We got light! This idea came from Little House Living (link below).
I have had this project on my mind lately and I just so happened upon a free printable from As They Grow Up (link below). I wanted J to be able to experience the braille alphabet with her fingers and this seemed the perfect way to do it. She wrote her name and the names of her brothers and sister using little dots of glue. After they dried, she was able to run her fingers along the raised dots to somewhat "see" how it felt to read braille. Now, I know that Mary isn't in the school for the blind yet, at least not in this book. But it seemed like a good project as any.
It has been on my mind as we have been going through these books that I wanted the kids and their father to build a "little wooden playhouse" in our yard. I had this project in mind from the beginning of the school year but it is proving to be more difficult than expected. The city is requiring that we obtain a permit for the playhouse and, since we bought the plans online, it requires that we have an architect looks at them for the state seal of approval. I am finding the more we investigate the building of this playhouse, the more walls we run into. It was a noble idea and it would have proved to be an awesome learning experience. I am still hoping to achieve this project but we will see. Hope you have an awesome weekend!
Links
Teacher By the Beach - has the idea for the braille name project using glue dots.
Little House Living - has the directions for the button lamp that we used to make ours.
Steve Spangler Science - also has a tutorial on how to make a button lamp.
As they Grow Up - has the free braille printable name activity.
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