LITTLE HOUSE IN
THE BIG WOODS

No more surfing the Internet and patching together a plan! This all-original Explorer’s Guide includes everything you need to help your kids soak up this book in experiential, academic ways. You’ll find prop ideas, activity and project directions, templates, “bookbite” suggestions, handouts, links to audiovisual aids, and other resources—all in one place! And all of it already happiness-tested by our Santa Cruz workshop students.

To jump to each section, click the menu bar above;  the vertical one on the right will scroll with you wherever you go. Anytime you’d like to print or save a PDF version, just click the printer image at the top of that bar. The PDF for this guide (which we used to call a “kit”) is 24 pages, plus 15 pages of handouts and activity downloads.

Here’s the agenda we followed when we taught this book as a workshop, but remember, you can pick and pull whatever you want. For preparation tips and specific ways to use this guide, pop over to our Tips page.

When choosing props, we always try to focus on two important categories: props that are unique to the setting, because they help kids understand “what that was like,” and props that are symbolic of themes, because they make big ideas visual and tangible. Both kinds of props generate those wide-eyed, “aha!” moments.

Below are the “straight from the story” props we used for our experience of this book.  Some props are easier to find or create than others – don’t feel your collection has to be this complete! Choose props that you think will have the most appeal to your kids and relevance to your goals.

Click on any image to expand it into a slideshow.

Ma and Aunt Eliza exchanged these spicy-sweet gifts at Christmas, and Grandma had one beside her in her kitchen while she stirred the giant kettle of syrup during the sugaring-off dance. Just as the spicy-sweet aroma of cloves and apples reminds the author of home, Christmas, and sugar-making, so will students be reminded of their experience of this book.

Ask the kids what happy-homemaking need Ma might have been addressing with her clove-studded apple. If they need some help getting the picture, brainstorm together about what the inside of the “Little House” might have smelled like at the end of the week in the middle of winter. Have them think through the things that filled the Ingalls’ lives – the foods, habits and activities that created their daily rituals and environment, from the sausages and cheeses in the larder to the wood smoke, log walls, animal-care duties, Jack the (sometimes wet) dog, kerosene lamps and just-once-a-week baths. A sweet smelling “settlers’ air freshener” would have been pretty and efficient, just like Ma.

When you ask the kids if they’d like to make one their own, they’ll go nuts! They’ll especially enjoy coming up with reasons why the cabin might have been stinky.

DIRECTIONS

So simple! Give an apple and a pile of cloves to each child. Before starting, ask the kids to take a good look at the cloves, noticing that they’re shaped like little nails. Show them how to push the stem of the clove all the way into the apple skin, and point out how good it will smell while they’re doing it. That’s all they need to know. If tiny fingers are having a hard time poking cloves into hard apples, show the kids how to use toothpicks to make holes for the cloves.

Some of them will figure out on their own that it’s fun to make patterns – we’re pretty sure Ma would have made pretty designs with her cloves.  Play some of Pa’s fiddle music (you can purchase the official collection) and revel in this shared multi-sensory experience!

SUPPLIES

• metal pan lid
• two baskets and cloths to cover them
• two jars or snack bags of cloves
• two apples
• two snack bags of cracklins
• two jars of maple syrup (add an antique label if you like)
• recipe/illustration form, 1 per team + pencils

Ma does a great job making the most of little — she literally uses that pig from head to tail! She’s also got a knack for making ordinary things quite special.  What better way to get in her shoes than with a Big Woods “cooking” competition, making the most of strange (to us) ingredients?

This fast-thinking activity got kids using their imaginations, working as a team, and seeing potential in the ordinary.

SETTING UP

1. Tell the kids that Ma’s use of everything (and making the most of it) reminds you of the cooking show Chopped. Explain the show’s concept to the kids:  chefs compete to make a fabulous dish from four weird ingredients in just a few minutes, and the dish that the judges like least gets “chopped” (that chef is eliminated).  Tell them they get to compete in Ma Ingalls’ version!
2. Divide the kids into two teams (or more — it’s fine to all share one basket, since there won’t be any actual cooking; for that matter, each child could participate individually. Whatever works for you!) Place a covered basket in front of each. Tell them that at your signal they’ll whisk off the cover and huddle to brainstorm a dish (we told our kids they could huddle anywhere in the room). They’ll write down the recipe and draw a picture of the completed dish, as imagined. They can add up to five new ingredients, but they must “use” all four in the basket.
3. Ask each team to choose a book-appropriate name (Wild Wolves? Stinging Wasps? Big Bears?), a recipe writer, and an illustrator.

DIRECTIONS

1. Say “Chefs, open your baskets!” and watch the fun begin!  You can play some of Pa’s fiddle music (you can purchase the official collection) to keep the mood festive.
2. After 20 minutes (or however much time you allow), countdown from 10 and say “Hands up! Step back, chefs!” Then ask each team to present their recipe and show their illustration. Give lots of serious judge-like responses to each dish. Pretend to confer with other judges (you can just turn your head and mumble “confer confer confer”), then turn back to the kids and say “We have reached a decision!”
3. Collect the recipes and put them under a pan lid. Say “Whose dish has been chopped?” and lift the lid, which reveals — nothing, because you have yanked all the recipes away as you lifted the lid, and hidden them behind your back. No one is chopped! It’s a tie! Everyone’s a winner! Pass out maple sugar, one bite of which is easily worth $10,000.

While the kids are nibbling, show them how maple sugar is made, and how nutritious it is!

SUPPLIES

• white half-sheets of cardstock for window
• assorted very dark crayons for sky
• white tempera paint and brushes, jars of water  for frost
• toothpicks and/or skewers, paper clips for designs
• light brown cardstock for cabin walls
• black and/or brown markers for logs, knotholes
• glue sticks for paper and wet glue for fabric
• folders (if you’re using them for storing handouts, as we do)
• dark brown cardstock cut into 1/2 x 8 1/2  strips (2 per) and 1/2 x 5 strips (2 per) for window frames
• dark brown cardstock cut into 1/4 x 8 1/2  strips (2 per) and 1/4 x 5 strips (2 per) for mullions
• calico cut into 8 ½ x 5 ½ sections and torn up the middle almost to the top for curtains (yes kids, they do look like pants)
• raffia in 6″ strands for curtain tiebacks
• colored paper for title tags, about 1 x 5

This simple project let us “do what Laura and Mary did,” and gave us a great opportunity to talk about frost and the conditions that create it. We chose to do a slow-reveal, and not to show the kids a sample or tell them what they were working on until the prep work was finished. They were completely intrigued, and delighted when they realized what we were actually doing.

DIRECTIONS

PHASE 1

1. Have the kids cover a piece of card stock edge to edge with solid crayon in deep sky colors. Don’t tell them why — just ask them to imagine sunrise or night time outside their bedroom window.
2. Tell them to obliterate their art with a thin layer of white paint — again, don’t explain why.  Let the paint dry while you do another activity or a handout.
3. Once they’re thoroughly distracted from this project, nonchalantly work in a conversation about frost, and its appearance in the book after “Jack Frost” visited. Talk about how it forms, what conditions are necessary for its formation, share some frost stories. Show them some frosty pictures from our Pinterest collection and be awed, all together, by the unexpected beauty of these intricate patterns. Ask the kids what familiar items from nature Jack Frost seems to be copying – we saw feathers, palm branches, tiny brachia of algae, fern leaves, root systems, and fish skeletons! Then tell them you hope they’re feeling inspired because they get to be Jack Frosts themselves on their very own windowpanes … which they’ve just created! (An excited gasp will fill the room).

PHASE 2 (after the paint is dry)

1. Have the kids get their now-dry “windows.” Demonstrate scraping off thin lines of paint with a toothpick to reveal the dark blues and purples beneath. Show them how they can imitate the frost patterns you’ve been admiring, or do something fanciful of their own design, perhaps imagining the kind of pictures Laura and Mary might have drawn.
2. Once the etching is done, have them glue a piece of brown cardstock to a folder (if you’re using folders), glue the window in the middle of it, and use markers to draw logs and knotholes on the cabin wall.
3. Frame the “frosted window” with brown strips of paper to resemble window panes and trim. Tell the kids their window scene will include something to represent every member of the family (except Jack). The girls helped etch the window, but of course Pa built the log cabin wall and the window frame.
4. What’s missing? Ma’s curtains! Complete the scene by gluing curtains to the top of the window frame. Tie them back with raffia (representing the wheat harvest).
5. Add the book’s title at the top or bottom, wherever it best fits.

It’s hard to read this book without wanting to dance a jig, even before you hear the happy sound of fiddle music. The scene where Grandma and Uncle George face off and try to out-jig the other is priceless.  Chin up, hands on hips, eyes sparkling, she did him in.

GO GRANDMA!

We told our kids we were pretty sure they couldn’t jig like her, and they happily took us on. So we put on some extra fun fiddle music and let them wear themselves out — it didn’t take long!

Little House in the Big Woods is chock-full of wonderful topics to explore, from the botany of the Wisconsin woods to the history of fiddle music to animal tracking and more. You could easily spend a month or more flushing out all the learning opportunities this book introduces. But such abundance can also sound pretty overwhelming! We’ve narrowed the focus to three bite-sized (but rich) areas, and based most of our activities and prop choices around these “takeaway topics.”

These are the LitWits® handouts included in this guide,

along with any necessary keys:

narrative arc

setting

history

creative writing

vocabulary

math

To respect the copyright holder, we’re redirecting you to Goodreads,
a noncommercial source of great quotes from Little House in the Big Woods.

TERMS OF USE

The Becky & Jenny version:  Feel free to print pages for teaching use, and make copies of handouts for your students. Please don’t use our name, ideas, or materials commercially.  Thank you for respecting our copyright and trademark rights!

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The LitWits Explorer’s Guide for Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House in the Big Woods
Copyright 2017 by LitWits Workshops, LLC.  All Rights Reserved.