When we started reading Farmer Boy back in December as part of our curriculum, I little imagined that my kids would latch onto it as they did. Farmer Boy is the second in the Little House on the Prairie series. When we finished that we decided to move onto the next book. Since then we have been flying through them. We’ve done Little House on the Prairie, On the Banks of Plum Creek, On the Shores of Silver Lake, and most recently we have started The Long Winter. We plan on finishing the series and then going back and reading the first book that we missed, Little House in the Big Woods.

One of the things that has surprised me is how much information from the stories the children are retaining. Usually we read at bed time and I let them play with legos or color as I read. It isn’t always apparent that they are paying attention, but I stop and ask questions and they are able to answer them.

I started thinking that it might be a good idea to link some kind of extra learning experience to the book. I got online and found a great number of ideas for each of the books (I wish I had thought to check sooner!) and I landed on the kids doing a notebook for The Long Winter. I was able to print out the materials and got out some notebooks. Armed with some scissors, glue sticks, and colored pencils they set to work.

Each page is a different chapter and each chapter has at least one topic that is important to that chapter. The kids write something about the chapter and draw a picture to illustrate it. It’s kind of like a visual book report. We’ve spent the past week trying to catch up to the chapters we are currently reading. The kids seem to really enjoy the activity and they are excited to show off their progress each day!

C’s notebook is on the left and Big E’s is on the right.