HomeSchooling
That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not alone and isolated from anyone. You belong. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Prairie Adventure: Walnut Grove’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum
Walnut Grove. If you have met Laura Ingalls primarily through the television series then you might be more familiar with Walnut Grove than some of the other Laura Ingalls spots. It’s a tiny tiny town with nary a recognizable restaurant or grocery store. We ate lunch (and breakfast) at Nellie’s cafe because it was named Nellie and because it was there. The town features a handful of Laura treasure stops though. Of course there is nearby Plum Creek. The Ingalls family lived at Plum Creek but the girls walked into town to school. The site of the original Masters Inn, Laura’s Walnut Grove’s only lodging place, is right downtown. The…
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Prairie Adventure: Plum Creek
I no longer have any idea what day it is. Does leaving your normal town and standard routine have this same effect on you? I also mostly do not know what hour it is. We are only one time zone off but that’s just enough to kick me off balance. Today was Plum Creek day. As in – on the literal banks of the actual Plum Creek. Oh my goodness. I love Plum Creek. It’s the real deal. The actual Plum Creek Laura and Mary regularly played in. The spring where they collected their drinking water. The stream where Laura sought her revenge on Nellie by leading her right to…
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Game Kit: A Great Little Product and a Lot of Fun
I cannot remember how long this sat on our shelf. At least a year. Likely more. I actually won a little box of treasures once on a blog giveaway so long ago that I cannot even remember what blog it was. It was a literal treasure box of items though. Bare books (our first introduction and now a staple to our homeschool supplies), wax crayons, a blank puzzle. And this. A blank do-it-yourself board game kit. A game kit complete with a blank board, a spinning wheel, blank cards, play money, dice – you name it. Upon a school room rearrange I unearthed the game kit hiding away and decided I…
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Prairie Journey – Guess What’s Waiting For Us in DeSmet?
Prairie days are getting closer on the calendar. Last year this adventure seemed so far away as I was hatching it and hoping it would work out. Actually, this trip has been nearly a decade in the making. Yeah – life is moving quickly like that. As we were taking this same basic journey with a bonnet-clad fifth-grader Riley, I knew then we’d do this journey again some day if time and circumstance were on our side. And, so far, it seems they both are. The order of travel is The Big Woods, Walnut Grove, Plum Creek and then Silver Lake in DeSmet, South Dakota. For a large portion of…
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Celebrating a Year of School
Yes, whilst looking at Instagram pictures recently I came to the realization that Wildwood Halls of Ivy had no End of School Year tradition. (Kind of like I needed a kick to get to a Field Day.) No tradition to celebrate conquering the arbitrarily assigned magic number of 180 days? That would never do. I like traditions. I like celebrating. I gathered the kids. Passed out blank sheets of paper. Tossed pencils at them. “Every one write down one food and one activity that you think sounds awesome.” And so they did. It was like an audition for traditions. A try out. We compared notes – if more than one…
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Field Day. Year Two.
I try not to spend a lot of my homeschooling days trying to match Wildwood Halls of Ivy to the local elementary school. Worksheets aren’t our mainstay and bells don’t ring on schedule. Bergen doesn’t have to raise his hand and Mosely can excuse herself to visit the restroom without asking permission. But last year a very typical traditional school activity became a part of our home educating experience. Field Day. Probably not an idea generated by me. (I don’t naturally think of sports-related days of competition. I’m not against it – I just don’t think about it at all. ) But the idea came up in our co-op. And…
Keep Reading . . .
Taking Them on an Adventure: The Literature Odyssey
try this at home
is this summer?
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B. I. N. G. O. – Laura Ingalls Edition.
It’s been a while really. But when Papaw and Grandma made their pilgrimage from the great north to the even greater south, they brought along a little game with them. It was a fishing version of bingo. The kids got kind of obsessed. Otto is a huge fan of all things fishing. (“Hissing” he still pronounces it.) And all the kids love to play games. They played this bingo game about eight times every afternoon. And then again after dinner for another half dozen rounds. Insatiable. Their appetite for bingo was insatiable. Of course I needed to tap into that insatiability. And so. We created our own Laura Ingalls bingo…
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How To Start Your Own Book Club
Two years ago I had an idea. I wanted my girls to look forward to talking about books. I wanted my daughters to discover that discussing ideas found in great books is actually fun. I wanted my daughters to see their friends, and their friends’ mothers, talking together about books and ideas instead of about boys and people’s clothes. I wanted to use inspiring literature to help me understand my girls better. I wanted inspiring literature to help my daughters understand themselves better. I wanted to spend time with my daughters. I was loaned this book – 100 Books for Girls to Grow On by Shireen Dodson. (Yes, I’ve already confessed that…
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Walnut Grove. Plum Creek. Oh, the Places We’ll See.
Every time we’ve finished another one of the nine Little House books this year I’ve wanted to weep a bit. (Now that I’ve confessed that I’m a crier, why try to disguise it anymore?) For, you know, a myriad of reasons. I. Love. These. Books. I love them for what they are – a treasure of memories from a girl whose life might not have seemed to matter at the time she was living it but whose life, when viewed collectively, is a history and a recollection of an era and a family and a lifestyle fading into our country’s past. I love them for what they have brought to our…
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Book Club: Homesick – My Own Journey
Monday night was Book Club night. This month we read Homesick: My Own Story by Jean Fritz. In this autobiographical work Jean Fritz tells about her experiences as an American growing up in China with parents who worked to bring the YMCA to China in the 1920’s. We happened to wait a little too late to snag the book from the library this month and I was forced to do what I rarely do – download the audio at a cost on iTunes. As it turned out, the audio book was a real treat because Jean Fritz herself was the narrator. Although I’m certain she wouldn’t qualify as a professional…
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Farmer Boy – You May Change Us Yet
We’ve just started to read Farmer Boy in our Little House on the Prairie Year. Farmer Boy covers the life of Almanzo, Laura’s husband, and his growing up years on a farm in Malone, New York. In the official series it actually appears as about book three I think, but our Prairie Primer suggests reading it at this juncture – right after These Happy Golden Years about Laura and Almanzo’s courtship. It helps with the flow of following Laura’s life first, plus Laura probably heard most of the Almanzo-grows-up stories during their long courtship and marriage. I’ve been infatuated with Laura Ingalls and her life and her words for decades…
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Elijah of Buxton: A Book Review
We listen to a lot of audio books. In the car. In the living room. In the school room. On the front porch. We like words. Stories. Thoughts well-placed and well-spoken. I choose the books we listen to in a variety of ways. Often they are suggested by one of my favorite homeschooling websites – Ambleside. Sometimes a friend suggests a good read. Frequently, I simply look over the stockpile at the library whenever we visit and just pick the next interesting book that we haven’t listened to yet. Elijah of Buxton fell into our laps in that manner. I recognized the author’s name – Christopher Paul Curtis –…
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On the Road: Gettysburg
You could easily spend an entire day there. But we just had an hour or two. And it was snowing. And 30 degrees. But the national park and museum were literally only minutes from the highway and we’ve been studying the Civil War in history this year along with our Prairie Primer so it just seemed irresponsible to not stop for a glimpse. We entered the wide hall area at the museum where you have to decide whether you want to buy tickets, arrange a bus tour, donate blood, watch a movie, take a guided auto tour, purchase museum tickets, adopt a dog. Okay, two of those weren’t real choices…
