Book Bag Activities for
Little House in the Big Woods
By: Wendy Horinek

• Wilder, Laura Ingalls (1932). Little House in the Big Woods. Illustrated by Garth Williams. New York: Harper Collins.

Rationale:

• I chose this book because I thought it was an appropriate book for third graders. It is a fairly easy read but has lots of opportunities in it to talk about Native Americans, pioneers and their lives, and families. It also has a variety of interesting vocabulary.

Information about the Author:

• Laura Ingalls was the second child of Charles and Caroline Ingalls. She was born on February 7, 1867 in Pepin, Wisconsin. She met and married Almanzo James Wilder in De Smet, South Dakota where she had been teaching school.
• After publishing many articles, Laura began to work on her memoirs, called Pioneer Girl. This was the start of the Little House on the Prairie series.
• Laura died on February 10, 1957.

Questions to use with the Story:

• Before: What do you know about life as an early pioneer and settler?
• During: What are some of the similarities and differences in how the Ingalls lived back then, and how today’s society lives today? What would have happened to the family had they stayed on the Prairie?
• After: How would you describe life on the Prairie?

Activities to use with the Story:

• Make a class quilt. It would be more fun to have students draw pictures depicting what was read in the book onto white fabric, but you could also use any other scraps of fabric found. Examples of pictures that could be drawn: a fiddle, a doll, butter churn, horses, the family, cows, log house, etc…
• Invite a fiddle player into your room and listen and learn about the music that Laura’s dad played. If you had the space, you could even teach some dances from the book.
• Role-play. Role-play a scene in the book. Have clothes to dress up in and actually mimic making butter, or grinding wheat, or other.
• Go on a picnic. Wrap a butter and cheese sandwich in brown paper. Bring hard-boiled eggs and cookies wrapped in brown paper, like the family in the book would have had to do.
• Make butter. For every pair of students, put one tablespoon of cream into a baby food jar. Have the students shake the jar for about 15-20 minutes until a lump of butter forms. Serve on bread.
• Grind wheat. Fill an old fashioned coffee grinder with wheat. Grind until all the wheat is ground. Regrind if it is not fine enough for baking. Grind wheat until you have enough to make a loaf of bread. This may take several weeks to do. Use “The Little House On the Prairie” cookbook for a recipe for the bread.
• Take a trip to a museum. Look at a log cabin and other items used in that time period. Compare/contrast what is used today.
• Interview a grandparent or other elder about how they grew up. Compare/contrast to how Laura and her family survived.
• Tape and play a Little House on the Prairie show. Have students recreate a scene from the book into a T.V. show (play).
• Keep a pioneer journal/dictionary of events and words from the chapters read.

Props:

• Butter churn
• pictures
• dress-up clothes
• Old-fashioned coffee grinder
• Pioneer journal
• Fiddle
• Miniature log cabin
• Butter molds
• Oil lamps
• Candles

Bibliography of other related books:

THE SERIES:

• Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder 1932
• Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder 1935
• Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder 1933
• On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder 1937
• By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder 1939
• The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder 1940
• Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder 1941
• These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder 1943
• The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder 1971

• Little House in the Ozarks: The Rediscovered Writings by Laura Ingalls Wilder 1996
• Musical Memories of Laura Ingalls Wilder (History Alive Through Music) by William T. Anderson 1996.
• Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography by William T. Anderson 1995
• The Little House Cookbook: Frontier Foods from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Classic Stories by Barbara M. Walker.
• Laura’s Album: A Remembrance Scrapbook of Laura Ingalls Wilder by William T. Anderson 1998

Assessment Plan:

• There would be a different assessment for each activity. For most of the activities the assessment would assess how well students worked with each other. Their journal would also be used for assessment, looking for how well they understood the text and the meaning they got from it.