Little House in the Big Woods

We're reading LHITBW by Laura Ingalls Wilder with my youngest (although the oldest likes to sit with us while we read). Today the section we read was about hog butchering day. As I was reading aloud I kept wondering how they were going to take it but they were fine and didn't even make faces. I was surprised, especially with the details about playing with the bladder and roasting the pig tail. [As a sidenote one Spanish word for balloon is vejiga which also means bladder which goes back to the origin of balloons.] With my current interest in foods of our grandparents and great-grandparents, I'm really enjoying that angle of the books (although I'm much more squeamish than my dc!).

When we read about Pa smoking the meat we ate buffalo jerky. The next section will deal with the pork skin and I have some bags of cracklins and pork skins to try (both crispy and puffy). At the beginning in which she mentions her corn cob doll we ate corn on the cob to get the cobs. I set them out to dry and it's been raining ever since! That will have to be a "do over" so we get to eat corn on the cob again soon.

I meshed 2 wonderful units that I found online for our study. I went through the book and put tabs at all of the stopping points with little notes on them. This way I don't have to refer to lesson plans, unit plans, or even floor plans! It's all there in front of me.

Click on the 'outline' files here for the reading outline. This was very helpful in knowing where to chunk it and put my little tabs. Then I combined the other unit in with these natural stops.

http://www.lapbooklessons.com/LittleHouseintheBigWoodsLapbook.html

Here is the other unit that I mentioned. It's from the wonderful people at homeschoolshare:

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/little_house_in_the_big_woods.php

I felt they were thorough enough that I didn't need to look anywhere else. So far it's been very enjoyable.

What's cookin'?

- The kraut is STILL not ready for the fridge. We got cool weather suddenly so maybe that's it.
- Almond milk is made; now I'm drying the "mush" left over from making the almond milk in the oven. That will be used for crackers or for almond shortbread cookies.
- I just took some sourdough out of the oven and some rolls out (not sourdough). Both of these are for sandwiches or whatever. I couldn't resist and ate a roll with butter and cream cheese while I typed this - mmmm.