Happy Birthday Laura Ingalls

Somehow, despite our entire school year’s focus on Laura Ingalls Wilder, her birthday surprised us this year.

Last week, the girls were at a birthday party for their friend when I realized that it wasn’t just our sweet friend Kate’s birthday – but it was Laura’s birthday too!

Of course, it was too late that day to celebrate our pioneer girl.

A few days after that I gathered my class, also known as my children, into a huddle of sorts at the kitchen table.  (Actually – we often form a huddle of sorts when we gather.)

I told them the plan.  Each child had two tasks to celebrate Laura Ingalls.  They must each pick a food from the Little House novels we’ve been reading to prepare for our family.  They must also choose and plan an activity for our party as well.

Last week we decided we would wait until Thursday to celebrate Laura’s birthday because we knew our friend Bob – known to our children as Pop Pop – would be spending the morning with us and we thought what better way to spend a school morning with a guest than by celebrating Laura Ingalls together.

While Bergen prepared his refreshment contribution – cornbread – the rest of the kids prepped their activity and gathered their supplies.

This was Bergen’s maiden voyage into cornbread baking.  He even had to wrestle a fresh egg from under a broody chicken to complete his task.  Talk about pioneer living.

While the cornbread baked, Piper Finn instructed us in the finer rules of playing hopscotch.

Her hopscotch squares were so cute and tiny that most of us had to hop on our tippy toes.

Our next games were tag – led by Otto, catch the cat – taught by Mosely and stick ball with Bergen as our leader.

Stick ball was especially amusing.  As we ran the bases placed in our yard by Berg we noticed that first base was the dog’s bed.  And on first base – was the dog!

Which, of course, changed the shape of the game as soon as Otto Fox made his first trip to first base and became a part of the base as well.

After we were exhausted from our games – but grateful for the glorious sunshine spreading across our backs – we all trekked it back inside for the final piece of our birthday celebration – the food!

London’s activity was a tea party.  The table was decorated, a candle was lit and the food was assembled in pretty bowls and plates and we said a prayer of thankfulness and invited Daddy to join our nearly noon celebration.

We enjoyed lemonade like Nellie served at her birthday party back at Plum Creek.  We had oyster crackers like the ones Pa ate alone during the blizzard where he was lost for three days right before Christmas.  We had pickles and cornbread, oranges like the girls found in the foot of their Christmas stockings.

It served as our lunch as well – which is a win for me!

I love when education can be tasty and fun all at the same time.

Happy birthday Laura Ingalls Wilder.  It feels like you’re family!