Well Read: Little House On The Prairie

"Home is the nicest word there is." -Laura

There are a ton of free activities online for studying Little House On The Prairie. Here I've compiled my favorites along with some pictures of our completed activities so that you can see some of these great ideas in action.

Reading and Language Art-

Ask your child to highlight any unfamiliar words or phrases and create a word wall with words and definitions. A list of some possible words for a word wall can be found here and here.

I found this awesome pdf. file of discussion questions. These aren't baby questions. Their ability to answer these questions will be a good guide for ensuring the child is listening during the read aloud time.

Writing Activities-

Lapbooks are a great way to get your child writing and reflecting creatively on the story. This is a free Lapbook that has tons of mini book activities to go with it.

In general, I'm not crazy about webquests because they seem to be so heavy on computer learning, but I like this one. It requires the child to keep a journal and provides writing activities that are really educational.

Write a question to Laura here. Questions will be answered by the Hoover Historic Society on her behalf.

Consider having your child write a letter to Laura as if he/she was a cousin (or other relative) who stayed back home. Or write about how hard it would be to miss your family and not know if they survived and were safe in the new frontier.

I'm not a huge fan of word searches for school time. They kind of seem like busy work to me, but if you need a reward activity for hard work done that day, you might consider this word search. If you use Sue Patrick's Workbox System, this might be a good reward box.

If you do copywork here is a cute notebook page with covered wagons as a border.

Math Activities-

If you like to include math through tangible play you might like this activity. It reads very formal so you'll want to think about how you can spruce it up in life.

For younger children, preschool-1st grade, I hope you enjoy the Math pdf. file I created using pioneer images for couting,addition and subtraction. I hope it shows up. Scribd has been giving me a little trouble lately. If you can't access it here just E-mail me and I can send it to you. :

Prairie Math Worksheets

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Homework School Work worksheet preschool math

History Activities-

Create a timeline or add to an existing timeline using the information here.

Visit the historic sites from Laura Ingalls Wilder's life. This slide show is really cool.

Talk about how different life would be if you lived in the cabin.

Life Skills-

Make butter by placing heavy whipping cream into a baby food jar. Tighten lid and have children shake the jar until it becomes butter. Serve the butter as a snack on fresh homemade bread or crackers. This would be a wonderful activity for antsy children to do while listening to the story being read aloud.

Make hand-dipped candles. Place old crayons an wax in a tin coffee cup and heat. Have children dip their wick into the wax until a candle is formed. Older children can roll out the candle on newsprint to help it shape better. Be careful it will be hot.

Check out Chloe and Caibry's candles:

Like to cook? This is a yummy sounding recipe for Gingerbread from Laura's cookbook. More pioneer recipes can be found here and boy do they sound yummy!

(image above from http://www.clipartguide.com)

Art-

Make an Apple Doll or a Covered Wagon. These are both really cute crafts.

Science Activities-

This is a science experiment on sap.

* Note, If you decide to do the web quest I would count that as science activity too as they will be learning about and studying animals on the prairie.

Georgrahy-

This Map of Laura's Travels is very neat. Print it out and have children color it along her route as you read.

We have a family friend named Mr. R who is 98 years old. Just for fun Chloe tried on an authentic prairie hat worn by his family while traveling to Oklahoma in a covered wagon.