Little House on the Prairie

Carolyn was on a reading adventure after we visited DeSmet South Dakota, the final place Laura (from Little House on the Prairie) lived with Ma and Pa. She read each book in the original series at about one book per day! I was out for a walk with my walking buddy when she mentioned that one of her daughters was crazy about "Little House" when she was younger and even had a "Little House" Birthday Party. Well, I knew it would be an easy sell with Carolyn and I was right.

We tried to enjoy the "planning" stages of the party, since the actual party goes so fast. That is hard, since some of the planning requires cleaning, which isn't that much fun. We enjoyed the rest though. One fun thing was making each girl an apron in their favorite color (well we tried - one girl changed her favorite color :).

The girls each made a rag-doll. (I sewed the stuffed pieces together for them, otherwise we would still be working on them.) Anna is holding the "practice doll" we made a few weeks ago.


The girls searched for Indian beads, feathers and coins (ok coins weren't very "true" to the story) at an "abandoned" Indian home-stead. (I put "abandoned" in quotes, because the Ingals thought it was abandoned, but the Indians returned and unfortunately had a very busy path right outside their log-cabin.) Our Indian home-stead was actually our sand-box, because sometimes you have to work with what you have.


The kids played prairie games. My sister-in-law had some great ideas from her "one room-school house" unit from her 3rd grade class. They had a "penny on the foot" race, and dropped clothes pins in the bottle before it was time for a meal of "prairie hen".


Here is the log-cabin cake. (version 2.0, the original was created for her actual birthday and can now be viewed on that date of the blog. trust me when I say the camera was kind!)


I think all the girls had fun!