Little House in the Big Woods, week 2 activities

More fun stuff for a new week!

For Week Two, we will be reading Chapter Two, Winter Days and Winter Nights.

Feel free to do all of the activities if you would like to, but don’t feel OBLIGATED to. Do the ones you can!

Here are our activities!

Family Activity: (choose one, or do them all!): Play Mad Dog like Pa did with Mary and Laura. Sing Yankee-Doodle-Dandy. Tell stories to each other in the evening before bed (a Bear story would be great… maybe Goldilocks?).

Do chores: In this chapter Laura describes the different chores Ma schedules out each week. They are: “wash on Monday iron on Tuesday, mend on Wednesday, churn on Thursday, clean on Friday, bake on Saturday, rest on Sunday.” She also mentions that even when they were little Laura and Mary helped with making the bed and doing dishes by hand. Try to do as many of these chores as possible this week to get a feel for the kinds of things they had to do in Laura’s house.

Make Butter: We found two sites with good directions for making butter without a churn since they can be hard to find. Here is a great one Lauri found, and here is another with similar instructions geared toward adults. :) Don’t forget to try dyeing your butter with the juice from carrot shavings like Ma did, and of course, taste the buttermilk as well!

Bake Bread: If you want a bread you can knead, try this one for Amish White Bread, as it received rave reviews from the girls over at Reclaiming the Home. However, I am partial to this recipe because it uses so little yeast and as such is very frugal. It is a delicious recipe too, and you don’t have to knead. LOVE that! :) Here’s my bread from this recipe:

Make Paper Dolls: Laura and Mary loved to play with the paper dolls that Ma cut out for them. Try cutting out some paper dolls yourself to play with. If you’re not good at doing things freehand, Lauri found a lovely website with printable outlines. Try printing them out on construction paper to have the dolls be dressed in “colored paper” like Mary and Laura’s dolls were. You could even try cutting out a bear and acting out the story that Pa described in the book (thank you Lauri for this idea!).

NOTE: We will be continuing items for the diarama and rag doll either next week or the week after, and Lauri will announce when she is ready to start the doll quilt-a-long as well. Thank you!

Again, I'll probably be skipping some of the activities, simply because I don't have any young kids to share them with. I may play "mad dog" with the cat, though :)

The fruit leather from week one turned out really yummy; I find myself snitching some out of the bag whenever I walk through the kitchen. We'll be grocery shopping tonight, so I may pick up some meat to make jerky. I also finished my rag doll last night. She looks a bit homely right now, but be patient with her. Once her hair grows in and she gets a dress, she'll be as lovely as could be.




-Jayne