Levi really likes the "Little House" series, we've read them all a few times, and he has also listened to them on CD at bedtime as well. I found some lapbook ideas online, and decided to go more in depth on the topic.
These are the two places we got many ideas from, I've also added my own, and modified some.
Homeschool Share (I'm always finding good stuff on here)
LapBook Lessons
Lapbook lessons has an entire learning plan all written out with activities to do after reading each section of the book. We have been loosely following this, although moving much faster than it suggests.
I haven't assembled the lapbook yet, I'm waiting until we finish everything, its going to be a big one!
We started out by talking about where Mary and Laura live in the Big Woods. We used some Lincoln logs and blocks to build a log cabin and barn. Later on in the week, Levi decided he wanted to build another log cabin, this time using pretzels and almond butter. He took the picture below with my camera, but ended up eating it before he got much farther.
Our cookie sheet is REALLY old, but it is clean, I promise!
Levi also decorated a log cabin for his lapbook, using Popsicle sticks for logs (we only had colorful ones), and markers to draw the rocks that make up the chimney. In the attic is an accordion book of some of the foods stored in the attic. He colored that as part of a listening activity, following my directions as to which color to use for each element.
The next part of the book explains how they preserved food. How do you preserve food with no fridge? For some of the meat, you smoke it. We did our own play on this for a snack - because we are vegetarian, we used firm tofu, which Levi sliced thin...
Gotta have the tongue out to cut accurately - he loves to help in the kitchen, and supervised of course, he is allowed to use the sharp knives.
The tofu was placed on a cookie rack, and then dried in a cool oven for a very long time until it turned into a chewy "jerky". If we had a food dehydrator, I would have used that, but ours pooped out.
Laura helped Pa to stoke the fire in the smoker by carrying hickory chips in her apron. Levi used his "Chef Levi" apron to clean up some of his junk from around the house. Its harder than you'd think to hold the apron and load it up at the same time!
These are the lapbook elements for meat preservation. Inside of the little house Levi wrote about smoking meat, and on the right is the smoker made from a log. The door opens up to show a fire, and hickory chips.
The next part of the book describes what happens when its time to kill the family pig for meat. Not very pleasant for a vegetarian family to read. The girls make a balloon out of the pig's bladder, so we did an origami activity to make a little paper balloon. Directions can be found here. Levi also did a cutting activity, cutting a circle into a spiral, like a pigs tail.
Next, we read about Laura and Mary playing with their dolls. Laura's doll is a corncob, so we used that as inspiraiton and made our own cornhusk doll. And then we had corn for dinner.
Peeling corn
The result (he was impressed!)
Thats it for now, more on the Little House in the Big Woods later!
The rest of our unit study is up!
Part 2
Part 3
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