Little House Tea Party

Last school year, we read through the Little House series and had a blast. As a final end-of-the-year project, we had a tea party. I thought I would share the photos as I don't think they made it to the blog.

J loves her playhouse. She sweeps regularly and washes the dishes for her house. I love seeing her play in her costume.

The house in this picture is just about done. It is missing the railing and the half door that my DH made.  He was finishing up the metal roof.

Here is a view of our party table. J made aprons for each guest and their party gift was a metal lunch tin filled with stick candy, a jar for their butter, and rock candy. I truly wanted to put jacks in them but when you are looking for something, you just can't seem to find it.

She showcased her hard work throughout the year. She made a quilt, a rag doll, a prairie costume for her American Girl doll, a popsicle log house, teepee, curtains for the little playhouse, and a weaved rug (of sorts). Those were just a few of her school projects.

We had several crafts for each girl to do as well as make butter. One of the crafts was this cute rag doll made of fabric scraps. I was worried the girls wouldn't like these but they were the hit of the party. Some girls drew faces, others played with their "babies." The party was a lot of work but it turned out cute. And the girls loved their aprons. Hope you were inspired by ours and you will have one of your own. Have fun.

Fourth Grade - Final Post

This past week, J has finished up most of her fourth grade work. She finished Math, Bible, Language Arts, Spelling, and our core - Sonlight Core E. This is what we have left to do - reading a few more chapters books and we will be totally done. Yay! Not too bad. Once this is done, we will have our Little House Tea Party, a week of Spring Cleaning, and testing. Then, we are ready for our summer vacation.

We will have a few changes next year such as scheduling. I am already looking towards our new school year, preparing for it (our work is never done:). But we are ready for a break. We have big plans for the summer - well, sort of:) We will be spending some time with Grandma and Grandpa, hosting an exchange student for a few weeks, and playing with our new Little House. We will see you soon.

Farmer Boy - Week 2

We are on our second week of Farmer Boy and we have been super busy. We are finishing our school year and we are getting ready for our Little House End-of-the-Year Tea Party. Our house has been a flurry of thread and sewing machines. We have been having a ball.

The kids have been enjoying our own "Little House" even though it isn't finished yet. They had lunch in their house and J dressed up!

J made cute tea pot invitations for her party. She cut out tea pots and added the details. We discovered Washi tape. She loves it.

We spent several days sewing for the party. Each girl will receive a simple apron when they arrive. The aprons are pink variations as J wanted to have a pink party. She sewed most of the aprons but I sewed on the eyelet trim.

J made white muslin curtains that she is appliquéing birds and hearts onto. These are going to be super cute in the play house. Pictures coming soon.

She made six aprons for the girls. I think they turned out super cute and they were simple to make. (link below)

Here's one of her aprons. They were made with fat quarters and eyelet trim. Didn't they turn out cute? We are still working on our party preparation. I hope to have more pictures soon. Have an awesome day.

Links

Restless Risa - has a cute idea for a rag doll that we will be using in our party.

Creative Green Living - has the simple pattern of the apron that we used for our party aprons.

Red Ted Art - has a cute tea cup pattern that we will be using at our table for the party.

Farmer Boy Notebook Pages - free printable

J and I are currently reading our last book of the Little House series - Farmer Boy. J doesn't remember that I read this book to her as part of her First Grade curriculum but that was so long ago. And we are glad to revisit this great book. What I decided for this book since there are so many activities to do, J would do a simple narration page for each set of chapters that we read and then, complete a free lap book that I found at Homeschool Share. The lap book mini books will be adhered to the back of her narration sheets and included in her Little House Notebook.

Download Farmer Boy Notebook Pages HERE.

Hope you are enjoying the final installment of The Little House books as we are. We are super excited about this one - there are a ton of ideas and projects to do. See you soon. 

Farmer Boy

We are in our final book of our Little House School Year - Farmer Boy. J and I have worked through all of the Little House books and The Prairie Primer. It has been a great year. We have both learned a tremendous amount. And this week, we have something exciting happening at our house.

This is the beginning of something fun :) From the start of our Prairie Primer and The Little House series, I had this crazy idea of building a little house playhouse as a final project. I thought it would be a great learning project for the kids to help build their own playhouse -oh, what they would learn with a hands-on project like that!

We truly didn't think that this project was going to be possible because of some snags with the city. But, with grit and determination (I just about gave up), my husband took hold of my vision and made it happen. Isn't he great?

It is coming along :) We can't wait for it to be finished because we are hoping to have an End-of-the-Year Little House Tea Party with some of J's friends. We have been planning this all year and J is super excited. See you soon. 

Nature Journaling

I had the privilege of camping this past weekend with a few of my friends. We camped at a neat little cabin near the beach on a small remote island. I can tell you that it was super hot and sweaty but, being by the beach, I was able to find some really cool shells. My friends are also super creative and I came home inspired:) Inspired by a book called Natural Journal by Kristen Rogers, and armed with a cute handmade journal, I encouraged J to draw the shells that I brought home.

J truly loved this activity - it was Science and Art all rolled up into one. We spent the morning, quietly observing the shells and sketching what we saw. It was a nice ending to my camping trip, an impromptu session for learning about shells. Have an awesome day.

These Happy Golden Years - free notebook pages

J and I have been working through The Prairie Primer this year and we have definitely enjoyed reading all of the Little House books. I had never personally read through all of them but it has been nice to read about Laura's life after the Big Woods. While working through each book, J has been completing notebook pages for each reading. I noticed that I forgot to post the notebook pages for These Happy Golden Years.

As we come closer to the end of the series, the activities and ideas in The Prairie Primer have been fewer and fewer. Since we are all most done, I decided to make it easier on myself and just create the notebook pages minus the mini books. For the mini books, I used the lap book printables that I found on Homeschool Share for the actual book. After each reading, J would write a summary of what was learned and then work on the mini books from the lap book. Then, she would glue them onto the backs of the summary pages. This tended to be easier and she was still able to add to her ever-expanding Little House notebook. Enjoy!

Download These Happy Golden Years Notebook Pages HERE.

Links

Homeschool Share - These Happy Golden Years lap book, free download.

These Happy Golden Years

We are working through The Prairie Primer and These Happy  Golden Years. J and I have been enjoying learning and reading about Laura Ingall's life. I have a list of activities that I want to accomplish during this year and one of them was to make lemonade. Lemonade seems to be the drink of the fourth of July celebrations that you read about in the books. We finally got around to making lemonade.

I bought a bag of lemons and tweaked the recipe somewhat. We doubled the recipe since we have so many who wanted to try the lemonade. J dissolved the sugar in hot water.

She squeezed the lemons with her bare hands :) We used the whole bag of lemons minus one for use as a garnish.

Sugar, water, and lemons - we made lemonade! It didn't last long around this house. Everyone loved it! One more activity crossed off my never-ending list - yay! See you soon.

Links

Little House on the Prairie - has  the recipe that we used for lemonade

State History - Final

We are coming to the close of our school year - only about 9 weeks left. Yay! J finished her year long state unit study and finished her lap book. All through the year, she has been making little books for this lap book and she finally completed the last one. I thought I would share her completed project.

Her outside cover which we had to tie with a string to keep closed.

We added several sheets inside to hold all of the mini books.

It turned out pretty big but she definitely learned a ton. She also worked on a huge state map which I may fold up and place inside since it was part of her study. Well, we can tick the state study off out To-Do list. She is slowly wrapping things up before the end of the year. I love when that happens. Have a great day.

Our 24 Family Ways with free printable

We finished our sibling bible study and we are onto another devotional - Our 24 Family Ways by Clay Clarkson. I wanted to continued our morning bible time but didn't want to pick up Telling God's Story Book 2 until next school year. I found this complete with coloring pages which seems to be the fav right now with my kids. To go along with this bible study I made several notebook sheets. My first draft of notebook sheets included too much writing for the time I allotted for our bible study. So, I changed it and now, they are art journaling. After every reading, they draw a few things to help them remember what was read.

There is a memory verse for each week so I try to find an extra coloring sheet for the verse. They can color it while I read.

Our first week of Our 24 Family Ways - our journal page, verse coloring sheet, and the coloring sheet from the book.

Here's a view of both Kaleb's and J's journal sheets for the week. The write the memory verse in the bracket and the family way at top. They draw what they want to remember from the bible readings.

This is my completed bible journaling page for our new devotion. Notice there are only four squares for journaling through the week. I just couldn't manage five squares but I figure they can journal Friday's lesson on the back. Each day they work a lesson, the color in the number flag. If you would like a copy of my journal page as well as the others I created that required more writing, look below. I hope you enjoy these. The kids and I have - I am right beside them for this and I like how these pages are working out. See you soon.

Download Bible Journaling Pages HERE

Frog & Toad Mini Unit

Recently, we have obtained some tickets to see a play called A Year With Frog and Toad. I couldn't think of a better time to do a mini unit on the Frog and Toad books. I was hoping to finish the unit for all of the books before the play but that might not happen since we are finishing up our other literature unit. We will at least have two of the books finished though, which is better than nothing. My fourth grader wanted to join in on the fun as well even though she read those books several years ago.

As I researched items and activities to do with Frog and Toad, I couldn't find anything out there that was free. I truly sat down one night intending to complete my own unit and printables for them when I found a Frog and Toad Reader's Notebook by Michael Friermood (link below). It isn't free but I had to decide if I had the time to create my own unit (while in fact I am working on many others) or buy one. I was truly looking for a lap book but the reader notebooks looked super cute. I liked how I could print two notebooks on one sheet of paper and how they were able to be used with my older and younger child. I took the plunge and bought the three pack.

Each notebook has a pre-reading, during-reading, and after-reading activity. There were review questions and vocabulary, learning about toads and frogs, drawing and researching. The kids loved them! Here are a few of the activities that we accomplished with our unit.

J is working on drawing her picture of what makes her grumpy for the pre-reading activity of chapter one.

Kaleb is working on his vocabulary word of green. He drew a picture that matched the definitions of the word in each block.

We learned about the differences between frogs and toads. They completed a Venn diagram and watched a mini movie (links below). We went to the play and they loved it. It was a cute musical about Frog and Toad's Year and it had every part that we read in the books. Love it! Hope you have an awesome weekend.

Links

Parents as Partners - has a youtube video of the differences between frogs and toad, complete with review questions at the end.

Michael Friermood - has the bundle for the Frog and Toad book, reader notebooks.

Happily Ever After Education - has the free printable Venn diagram and a writing project for the differences between frogs and toads.

The Long Winter - Weeks 1 & 2

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.