PRAIRIE PRIMER ~ SQUARE DANCING and HASTY PUDDING

I forgot to post this from our Prairie Primer studies.  This fall we read "Little House in the Big Woods".  We met with friends to do some fun, hands-on activities.  In this post we read about the dance at Grandpa and Grandma's house, learned to square dance, made hasty pudding and learned how real maple syrup is made.  It was a great day.

Reading about the dance.

Hasty pudding.

Square dancing!  Elvis joined us to help out.

Swing your partner!

Time to eat our hasty pudding.

It was unanimous.  It was good but even BETTER with real maple syrup.

Coloring as we learn about how maple syrup is made.

It was another great day.  Prairie Primer is our favorite subject this year.

LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS ~ PANCAKE MEN

We are having fun reading Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  For our last 2 chapters we made log cabins, corn cob dolls, homemade butter and learned about prisms.  This week at home we read about Christmas morning and how Ma made pancake men.  We decided it would be fun to do the same.

When I read aloud  I allow the kids to draw, color or play quietly as long as they are listening.

 They enjoy the illustrations.

 We gathered our supplies.  We realized we were out of milk.  After a quick run to the store we started again.

 Carefully measuring........

 ......and mixing.

 Pancake men on the griddle.

 Watching them cook.

 I had Boo flip one.  I flipped the one on the right.

 Ooopsie.

 Hee, hee.

 He is ready to dig in!

 She wanted a snowman.  

YUM!

 We bought real maple syrup.

 She named him Olaf.

 Ready to eat!  

 Olaf gets 2 thumbs up.

 Two more pancake men.  One for me pictured here and one for Elvis.

 Of course there was clean up.  True to Little House life they washed the dishes.

It was a fun & tasty lesson.  

Snow Candy aka Sugar on Snow

It did indeed snow! We received 5 inches! That is a lot of snow for us. Our containers were overflowing with snow. It was a wet snow too which was perfect for playing in. But more on that later.

All of our containers.

That evening I made our treat. The kids were excited to see what I was up to.

I took what pure maple syrup we had left in the bottle & poured it into a sauce pan. Then I let it heat up & continually stirred it to keep it from burning. It smelled delicious!

I experimented a bit but had to boil it longer before it really worked to make candy.

While I was boiling the syrup the kids ran outside to fill their bowls up with snow we had collected the night before.

Here I spooned a little in Boo's bowl to experiment. It was ready!

Princess' bowl.

The syrup was cooled by the snow & it turned into candy! The longer it sat in the snow the harder it became.

Some of it hardened into neat shapes.

The thicker blobs made a taffy like candy. Oh so yummy!

Princess is enjoying a larger piece.

The Snow Candy was a HUGE hit! It reminded us of the maple candies we used to buy at the apple orchard back in Mass. We will definitely be making this treat again!

BTW, this was a treat that Laura Ingalls talked about in her book, "Little House in the Big Woods". We read this in our Prairie Primer studies this fall & studied a little about Maple trees & syrup making.