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!!!