little house on the prairie

I grew up loving Little House on the Prairie! We've been reading through this series for our read aloud time everyday this summer. Have you heard of Across the Curriculum with Favorite Authors? We are using the guide for Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. The guide covers all seven books. It has questions to ask your kids at the end of each chapter and easy to involved activities and crafts to do for each book (you don't have to do them all). After we finish the Little House series, I want to get the Dr. Suess guide. They are loving this stuff!

Here the girls are in their bonnets. They are pretending to have mustaches like Pa. My great-grandmother made these bonnets in 1961 for a 75th year anniversary celebration in Douglas, Wy. The Wyoming residents of this town all dressed up in 1886 style clothing--bonnets and all. My mom and her sisters wore these fashionable bonnets.

The first book, Little House in the Big Woods, suggests that you made rag dolls. The girls picked out some fabric I had on hand (from my quilting days) and we went to work. They both got their first lesson on the sewing machine. Paige was pretty good at it! Sewing the yarn on for hair was not an easy task. I did all of Faith's (the blue dress), but Paige asked if she could do her doll's hair. I really didn't think she could do it, it was hard for me to push the needle through! But she did it, all on her own . . . her doll has a bit of face hair, but she was very proud! I don't think they had Sharpie's back in the olden days, but by the time I was done sewing hair and eyes, I was ready to be done. The girls were excited to draw faces on their dolls.

In the book, Little House on the Prairie, they suggest building a log cabin out of pretzel rods. This was so fun! Another day we built a chimney, with river rocks, just as Pa did. There is also some paper furniture inside the house, which the book provides the templates for. The wolves surrounding the cabin was all Faith's idea. At one part in the book an entire pack of wolves surrounds their cabin all night long. We found a picture online and made a bunch of copies and the girls colored and cut them out. So fun!

This last picture was a special request from Faith. She is very into "The Blog" thing. She wanted me to put up a picture of Carpet Bear all by himself . . . in the bonnet of course!