Learning with Legos: Little House on the Prairie

The minions and I have been obsessed with Laura Ingalls and everything Little House.  We have even started watching the remake of the movie by Disney, which was a great way to teach my kids about house people often take "creative liberties" when making books into movies.  Well I have tons of creative "pioneer" activities that I have found on the interwebs but supplies run out and it was 400 degrees outside and I really, really didn't want to leave the comfort of my cool house to go shopping in the infernal heat of the desert.  So I had to think of something on the fly and thought why not use some of the 800 billion Legos that the kids have! 
So I challenged the kids to create a model of the Ingalls family in any scene, from any book we have read, which so far has only been "Little House in the Big Woods," "Little House on the Prairie," and half of "Farmer Boy."  Although Sonshine really enjoyed the books, and really enjoys (OK, he's obsessed with) Legos, he refused to take part in this activity because he was in a bad mood so me and Teenie completed this scene. Then Teenie took the pictures, she's becoming a really good blog photographer.

Inside the little house on the prairie.

The wagon with Pet and Patty, Laura, Mary, Ma and Pa.

The front view of the with Jack in the yard.

Pretty good for an 8 year old! Sonshine even decided to join in and play with the finished creations.  Best of all, we stayed cool, didn't spend any money and didn't make too much of a mess.

Pioneer Fun: Making "Straw" Hats

In "Little House in the Big Woods," Laura talked about her mother making everyone hats. I don't have straw, and I think I am allergic to it anyways, so i didn't want to go buy some and risk it.  So we made our hats out of brown paper bags.  I even found a pattern for it online and so we made hats.  I recommend giving yourself 2 days to finish this project and use "Tacky Glue."  Another cheap and super easy activity for the kidlets.

My kids in their "old timey" picture pose.

These hats came out surprisingly sturdy. We will be hanging them on the wall in our "school" area with the rest of our "Little House" crafts.

Pioneer Fun: Making Wagons

We had a great time reading "Little House in the Big Woods," and have continued on to the next book in the series, "Little House on the Prairie."  But we couldn't go on our adventure until we had a covered wagon, so we made some.  I got the pattern at education.com,  and printed it out on card stock.  If you don't have card stock, you can always print out on regular paper and glue it to cardboard to make it nice and sturdy.  I highly recommend making them sturdy, because the first thing the kids did after they were done was put stuff in them!

 And here they are all finished! Neither one of the kids wanted to color the strapping across the tops because they liked them better this way.   

I want to live like Laura!!!

The kids and I had been working on "Little House in the Big Woods," one chapter at a time, for about a month.  I loved the book and so did the kids, I really loved the book though and seriously believe that I might have been born in the wrong time period.
Anywho enough about me and my desire to live in the past....I would sit and read the book out loud and then we would talk about it.  But in our house talking about things often leads to doing! Worksheets get boring when you do them all day long, so why not practice living the pioneer life. Sonshine learned to chop wood, with a real ax (and still has all of his limbs)!  Teenie made a quilt (although we did cheat and use a sewing machine...oh well close enough!)  After finishing the book, the kids didn't want the fun to end, so we started reading "Little House on the Prairie,"and made little wagons. 

Here is a list of links to activities and inspiration that we have or will be using for our unit study.
Crafts
Make A Bonnet
Have A Taffy Pull
Make A Rag Doll
Learn To Weave
 Old Fashioned Toys and Games
More Crafts
More Activities

Unit Study
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