Little House- Day Three and Four- MAKING BUTTER!

We learned all about churning butter! Due to unforeseen circumstances, we were not able to churn butter the day we read about it, but we had fun none-the-less!

We also received two books in the mail, My Little House Crafts Book and The Prairie Girl's Guide to Life. Both are books I highly recommend! 

As far as the curriculum I have put together, I have already made a few minor changes. Mistakes I made or crafts/lessons I wanted to add in. So I am making pencil marks in there so that I can make the necessary changes to my Master Copy on the computer.


Below are some pictures of our crafts and churning butter from the last couple days!

Butterchurn Booklet

Attic Treasure Accordion Book

Building a chimney...

Sterilized Cooking Utensils...

Why are we grating a carrot? We are preparing to dye our butter just like LHOP! However, due to our somewhat testy grater, I chose to use the Magic Bullet instead...

Time to scald some milk...

Then add the shredded carrot...

Mix...

Scald...

After scalding our carrot-milk, we strain the carrot pieces out...

Add the carrot-milk to the jar...

Add three cups of cold full cream...

What I really wanted to use to churn our milk was our butter churn that was my great-grandparents, but there is a crack in the base of the jar that someone put it in years before we got it...

So....we attempted to do it using a mason jar:

That was taking MORE time than it was worth....so we switched to modern appliances:

Little butter buds starting to appear!

WE HAVE BUTTER!!!!

Draining the butter milk off...

Our yummy buttermilk!

The finished product!

Fresh butter and buttermilk mean that we need to make buttermilk biscuits!

You can find the recipe I used for the biscuits here: Southern Buttermilk Biscuits

And fresh butter and buttermilk biscuits mean......a tea party!

Hope you enjoyed pictures of  our buttery day like we did!

Little House- Day Two

"Standing on end in the yard was a tall length cut from the trunk of a big hollow tree. Pa had driven nails inside as far as he could reach from each end. Then he stood it up, put a little roof over the top, and cut a little door on one side near the bottom. On the piece that he cut out he fastened leather hinges; then he fitted it into place, and that was the little door, with the bark still on it.............The hams and the shoulders were put in brine, for they would be smoked, like the venison, in the hollow log."   LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS, CHAPTER ONE 

A lot of people smoke their meat for a hobby, for the taste etc...but can you imagine that being one of the main ways to keep your food for all of winter? When we read the whole outline of what they did to preserve every LITTLE bit of the pig, the amount of work amazed us! They used every part of the animal down to the tail that they roasted for a fun treat. This wasn't your typical "Oh, someone gave us some ham, let's put it in the smoker this afternoon.", it was an all day or two affair to get it all preserved before going bad.

For our craft today, the girls colored a tree trunk smokehouse, added pine chips and a little door to complete it. We wanted to put some Hickory Smoke drops on it, but we were all out. Next time we buy it, we will put a couple drops on. 

Down below, you will see some pictures from the morning:

Adding the glue...

The Smokehouse Activity.

Finished product!

Some of daddy's smoker chips!

Stapling in the door to our smokehouse...

Proud of their work...

One of the illustrations by Garth Williams of the smokehouse.

Hope you enjoyed today's installment of Little House in the Big Woods. Tomorrow we will have something really fun, so be sure and check back tomorrow evening!

Little House- Day One

In an earlier post, I talked about how I was going to be using the Laura Ingalls Wilder set of books to teach history, literature, language arts, science, home ec and the list goes on.

So far I have done up lessons for the first two books which will take us about to Christmas break or a little after.

Here is our first day in pictures:

Reading part of the first chapter of Little House in the Big Woods. Note the bright orange cover of my copy, it was given to me when I was a little girl. It was printed in 1932 and no, I am NOT that old, even if I am covering my gray hair with a super cool hat!

Imagine my surprise when I went to the bookshelf and realized that we had not only three sets of LHOP books, but FIVE Little House in the Big Woods books! So while we will not be able all read a book for the whole course, at least we can for this first book!

Working on their cover page for our lapbooks...

The curriculum I have put together!

Did you realize that in the year 1863 when the Ingalls' moved to the Big Woods, President Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address?

Our time line that will be posted on the wall to go around the room. 

Next time I will post a picture of it on the wall. 

The top half is the life of Laura I. Wilder, the bottom half is American history that happened at the same time.

We had a fantastic time and look forward to tomorrow!!! Oh, and guess what came today in the mail?

Little House On The Prairie for History?

And Art? And Home Ec? And Science? And Music? Wha-at? All from Little House on the Prairie?

Amazing, right? I got this idea a couple years ago to use the LHOP (Little House on the Prairie) series to teach my girls, but I wasn't really sure what I wanted and how to go about it. I know you can buy pre-made curriculum, I have seen at least one. However, they didn't teach what I wanted and tended to concentrate on only one area.

After looking through a couple books that talk about LHOP and Laura's life, I realized that I could do my own curriculum and hit the areas I want to hit. I love coming up with my own lesson plans ANYWAY....so it wasn't too hard to start pulling things together!

I have several books that I am referring to as I do this: (Just so you know, I am not getting any kind of monetary or any other kind of gain for promoting these books. Just want to put the links in so you can find them yourself!)

One is called The World of Little House and it goes through all the books giving bits of background information as well as ideas for activities like how to make a spiced apple or how to make a nine-patch quilt. In the back of it, there is also a time line telling what is happening in the United States at the same time as what is happening in Laura's life. Extremely interesting and as you can imagine, this is where we will be tying in our history lessons. We will be working on a Time Line that will cover one whole wall in our dining room.

Another book is called The Little House Cookbook. Thanks to my totally awesome friend, Gale, who told me she had this book and thought I might like to use it, we will be able to cook some authentic, period food!

My Little House Crafts Book is sure to be a hit and give us even more ideas on fun activities! There is also The Prairie Girl's Guide To Life , The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook and last but not least The Little House Guidebook .

I also found lapbook printables at Lapbook Lessons dot com for the Little House In The Big Woods Book.

So how am I going to do this? Well, we will read a portion of the book every school day. However, on Mondays, we will have our project days. On those days we will work on our Time Line, read books that have to do with the US History that is happening at the same time as what is going on with Laura, and any correspondence we might have with the different LIW (Laura Ingalls Wilder) foundations to get more information.

On other days of the week, there might be, depending on what we are reading about in that chapter:

•  a piano/singing lesson to go with whatever song we learned about that day.
• an art lesson.
• a cooking lesson, such as how to make "vanity" cakes.
• a science project.
• a home ec project, such as making a nine-patch quilt.
• a history lesson.

The list goes on! So far I have 59 lessons mapped out that will take us right up to Christmas break and through the first two books, Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie. (We are starting on Monday.) I will just need to pop in a few more things in my lesson plans when my special delivery from Amazon arrives at the door!

Just had to share and I would love to hear any ideas you have!!!

Money Fast Project Dumped...Focusing on Food Bill

Well, I dumped this project. Mainly because a week into it, both me and my hubby realized that the only place money is really spent is in food. We rarely, if ever, purchase anything we just "want". Most everything we purchase is a true need. We don't live with credit cards, we are a strict cash transaction family with the occasional bill paid online.

As far as food goes, we generally live a very healthy lifestyle and you really pay to eat healthy. Our main food purchases are meat, dairy and produce. We tend to only buy "junk" or "convenience" foods if we are away from home. No soda, chips, crackers, pasta etc...no cheap food kept in our house! LOL

So I have a new project and that is to go around to the different stores in the areas and start doing better comparing on what we buy. I can't use coupons for the healthy, living food that we eat...so I need to find out what stores in our area offer better prices on the foods we eat.

Speaking of saving money, on Pinterest today, I found this great blog called Pinch Those Pennies- 50 Tips To Be Frugal and it has great ideas. Some of them are things I already know, but others I have not heard of. Going to print it off and stick it in my Household Binder to refer to. And there is a whole section on Grocery Tips that I am looking forward to reading!

Fall Re-Arranging and Cleaning, Anyone?

For the past couple weeks, I have been feeling the "urge to purge" that I feel every Fall. Okay, in all honesty, I feel this way all the time, not just Fall. It is, however, a much stronger urge! I don't know if it is the nice, cool mornings or the fact that we have been busy all summer and things are in need of organization, but I just can't help it. Maybe I need to join a support group entitled "Moms Who Cannot Stop Themselves From Cleaning and Organizing (Not-To-Mention-Rearranging-The-Whole-House)"?!? Sigh....

So what have I been up to? Well....let's just say that I have been up to my eyeballs in re-arranging and cleaning things around here.

Last Monday, I moved our desk that was in the living room into the office. Then moved a three leaf table, that was in the office, into the living room. We re-arranged the living room to better fit the space and furniture and moved the piano, oddly enough, into the dining room. The dining room is a huge space and it actually looks really nice in there! The acoustics are gre-at in there as well!

Then today, I cleared out the junk, mainly OTHER people's stuff, out of the closet in the living room and moved the home-school stuff out of the living room and put it in that closet. There is even room for the vacuum cleaner that has never had a home in all the years we have lived in this house! Now it is not wandering from room to room looking for a place to be out of the way!

So what did  I do with the closet besides find a home for the vacuum? I turned it into a home-school closet! I took our bookshelf and cubbies that were in the dining room and put them in the closet. Dining room looks a bit neater and the school stuff is still easily accessible! A win-win situation for all.

Now today....I am going to go through my cookbooks!

September 14, End of Week Two

Here we are at the end of week two of the school year! It was a great week, even if I ended up in bed yesterday and today. Migraine hit me Wednesday afternoon and knocked me off my socks.

Thankfully, my children are at a age where they are able to work quite well independently. My 2nd and 3rd graders still need a little help, but they were more than happy to come in my bedroom, climb on the bed and ask for help.

Obviously my kids don't just pick up the books and decide how much they are going to do and for how long or any of that. When my kiddos were younger, I was able to do day by day lesson planning. However, several years ago, I sat down to make out about a month's worth of lessons and realized how much I liked planning ahead. So now, I plan out my lessons in PENCIL for any where from one to four months out. How far out sometimes depends on how much curriculum I have ordered, what we are studying or even just how much energy I have. Currently I have lessons planned out to Christmas break.

The joy in the hard work of doing this comes when something like me being knocked down for a migraine for two days comes...my kids knew what needed to be done just by looking in the book. Plus, the older girls know our opening routine so well, that they can do it without me!

How was your week? Good? Bad? Let me know!

Hiking Trails

We heard about some trails last year and finally got over to try them out. We barely touched the surface of all the trails! Can't wait to get back!

Uh oh, someone biffed it!

Yes....we took the easy route this time! It was the middle of the afternoon and we had the kiddos!

Sure love these kiddos!

Our faithful friend, Lady!