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.

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. 

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

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.

By the Shores of Silver Lake - Final

This is our final post about By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We finished the book recently and completed our pending projects.

J is working through the notebook pages that I created to go along with The Prairie Primer unit on By the Shores of Silver Lake. I was hesitant to post these pages until J finished them but I think they turned out great. She liked that they had more lines for her to write and she wasn't overwhelmed with a ton of mini books to go-along with the chapter readings.

One of my favorite pages was the recipe page with the mason jar recipe card for Dried Applesauce (link below). This turned out cute. She wrote a letter and a menu for the Christmas dinner. We also made a menu for the New Year's Dinner because it was so memorable to Laura.

It took a while for our next project to come because I was so late in ordering them. I wasn't sure J truly wanted to do this but I went ahead anyway. We dissected cow eyes. We briefly learned about the eye at the beginning of the book. This is the book that talks about Mary's blindness. J really didn't want to try this but I felt like it was an important part to her science learning for the series, so I finally ordered them.

This picture sums it up - Kaleb loved the cow eye and wasn't afraid to touch it at all and J, well....not so much. They both, however, kept their lenses from the eyeball in a ziplock bag to show their friends!

One last project was to make apple butter. The book mentions dried applesauce but J is not a big fan of applesauce so I gave her the option of making apple butter. I found a simple recipe for the crock pot (link below).

J was afraid to try it but in the end, she loved it. So did Kaleb and Riley! They promptly ate half a loaf of bread toasted with apple butter on it! So, we are finished with By the Shores of Silver Lake and we are ready to move on to The Long Winter. See you soon.

Links

All Recipes - has the recipe for the apple butter in the crock pot.

Little House Books - has the recipe for the dried applesauce.

Home Training Tools - has the cow eyeball dissection kit that we used but I must warn you the size of the eyeballs differed greatly.

The Long Winter - with free printable

J and I are currently working through The Little House series and we are on The Long Winter. As our spine, we are using The Prairie Primer. The further you go through the books, the less there is available to use as in lap books and such. So I decided to create some note booking pages for the last few books in the series. These pages are used in conjunction with The Prairie Primer - they are not meant to replace this book. J had started The Little House notebook and wanted to continue with it until the unit was done.

Each chapter reading begins with a narration page. J writes what she learned and read at the top of the page. The bottom part of the page is usually an activity or research that she will work on.

This is another page of mini books for our notebooking pages. This one has a teepee on it. She will research the names of the Indian Tribes where the Ingalls Family lived and add them to the image. There is also a mini flip book about the differences between hay and straw.

Here is another sample of some of the mini books that J will be working on through out this unit. She will research Samuel Morse and muskrats. These mini books will be added to her notebook page for the day. I wanted to offer these pages to you if you too are looking for something to complete your Prairie Primer education. Hope these help. Enjoy.

Download The Long Winter Notebook Pages HERE.

By The Shores of Silver Lake - Sewing Day

J and I are currently reading through our fourth Little House book in the series - By the Shores of Silver Lake. J has been asking me to find some dress patterns for her American girl doll that looked like her prairie dress. We finally took a whole Saturday and sewed until our hearts were content:)

J wanted a prairie dress and bonnet to make. She was concerned about the sleeves and such so I helped her with the tiny seams. J is cutting out her pattern using a cute blue calico that my mom sent (thanks mom!).

Here is J's prairie bonnet - it turned out cute and was a simple project to sew. This gave us courage to try the dress.

The dress turned out to be somewhat harder that expected. But it turned out pretty cute. But now I know why I don't sew dolls clothes:)

Links

Ag Play Things - has the free patterns for several of the American Girl dolls including the one we used for the bonnet and dress.

By The Shores of Silver Lake Tea Party

This Little House tea party has been on my mind for a while now and we just recently found the time to have it. I truly wanted to have this tea party when Ma invited the girls from Plum Creek over for Vanity Cakes and tea. But, time got away from me and I finally made up my mind to do it. I was glad, as well, and it wasn't as difficult as I expected. One way that I made it simpler was that I made easy doughnuts instead of trying the vanity cakes recipe from the cookbook. I read that these could be difficult to make and I just wanted to go the easy route.

We made these 3 minute doughnuts that I found from Fun Cheap or Free (link below). They couldn't have been easier - a can of biscuits, some oil, and sugar. Super easy!

J and Kaleb set the table for our tea party. I brought out the white table cloth and our special tea cups and saucers.

J wanted flowers and I brewed the tea. Our dishes didn't match but that was the fun of it! We found our special tea cups at the Goodwill.

Our plate full of easy doughnuts. It didn't take long before they disappeared. I had to make a plate for my DH or he wouldn't have been able to try them.

J served the doughnuts in her prairie costume (Thanks Mom!). Riley joined us - I chickened out about letting him use the glass plate and cup though. Maybe next time. He also brought his Darth mask - he wanted to dress up too:) He just couldn't eat the doughnuts with it on.

Kaleb slurping his tea. Even though he is slurping, it was a great time to enforce some table manners. We talked about elbows, taking smaller bites, and not wiping our faces on our shirts:)

J is trying out her pinking drinking - haha. Riley too!

This tea party was hosted by my mom! Thanks mom! She was the one who graced us with this awesome tea pot and sugar/creamer set. We will be using this for a long time. We love you and wish you were here for our tea party - maybe next time:) If you haven't taken the time for a tea party, you should. It was fun, simple, and easy to do. Have a great day.

Links

Fun Cheap or Free - has the recipe for the 3 minute doughnuts. Try them!