Little House in the Big Woods Lapbook

This is the lapbook for our Little House in the Big Woods book review. Here are a few pictures of our completed lapbook.  You can find the pdf version of this study guide here.

Here is the study guide that I created for our review as well as links to the lapbook components. Some components will be a bit different than the components shown above to allow answers to fit a bit better.

Chapter One

1. Meat Preservation: how did Pa preserve the meat?

• Venison
  Pa cut the venison up in pieces, salted it, and put it on a board. He prepared a hollow log for the smoking process. He put a hole in each of the pieces of meat and placed it on a string. He hung the meat on nails inside the hollow log. He built a small fire inside the log out of bark and moss. He placed some green hickory chips on the fire to create a nice thick smoke.
• Fish
  Fish was salted down and placed in barrels.
• Pork
  Pa laid the pieces of pork on a board and salted them. The hams and shoulders were put in brine and smoked like the venison.

2. Mary’s Doll, Laura’s Doll: describe Mary’s doll and Laura’s doll

• Mary had a rag doll named Nettie.
• Laura’s doll was a corn cob wrapped in a handkerchief. Her name was Susan.

Chapter One Components
Chapter Two
1. Chores: Right down Ma’s chore saying
“Wash on Monday,
Iron on Tuesday,
Mend on Wednesday,
Churn on Thursday,
Clean on Friday,
Bake on Saturday,
Rest on Sunday.”

2. How to Make Butter: lists the steps to make butter

• Milk the cow.
• Put milk in a place where it would not be disturbed to enable cream to separate.
• Skim off the cream.
• Add carrot coloring.
• Scald the churn dash.
• Cream splashed around the hole.
• Tiny grains of yellow butter begin to appear on the dash.
• Wash the butter
• Salt the butter.
• Place the butter in a mold.

Chapter Two Components
Chapter Three
1. Making Bullets: Describe how Pa made bullets.

• Pa melted bits of lead.
• He poured the melted lead into a bullet mold.
• When they had become solid, he released the bullets from the mold.
• When they were cool, he used his knife to trim off the bumps left by the mold.

2. Gun Safety: Explain why Pa keeping the gun loaded is not safe.

• Talk about gun safety

Chapter Three Components
Chapter Four
1. Christmas: Describe Christmas at your house and Christmas at the Ingalls house.
Chapter Four Components
Chapter Five
1. Sunday: Describe the Ingalls’ Sunday Routine.
2. Grandpa’s Sled and the Pig: Retell the story
Chapter Five Components
Chapter Six
1. Escaping the Bear: What did Laura do that allowed them to get away from the Bear?
Laura did exactly as Ma told her, quickly and without question.
Chapter Six Components
Chapter Seven
1. Sugar Snow: What is sugar snow?
When the temperatures drop suddenly after a warm spell and produce large snowflakes, the leafing of trees is slowed and the sap runs longer. This allows for more production of maple syrup or sugar.

2. It’s Maple Syrup Time: Describe the process of collecting and making maple syrup.

• Drill holes in the maple trees and place taps in the holes.
• Hang buckets on the taps.
• Empty buckets into large kettle/container.
• Boil sap – adding more sap as necessary.
• Skim sap.
• Lift ladles of sap up and slowly pour back in if the mixture gets too hot.
• Once it has boiled down enough, take out the maple syrup.
• When sap starts to grain, quickly place in pans and allow to cool to make maple sugar.

Chapter Seven Components
Chapter Eight
1. Tracks: label the animal tracks.

• 1st Deer
• 2nd Bunny
• 3rd Fox
• 4th Mouse
• 5th Bird

Chapter Eight Components
Chapter Nine
1. Laura and Mary’s Candy from Town: Write down the sayings that were on Mary’s and Laura’s candy.

• Laura: “Sweets to the Sweet”
• Mary: “Roses are red, Violets are blue, Sugar is sweet, and so are you.”

Chapter Nine Components
Chapter Ten
1. Making Cheese: Write the steps in making cheese.

• Ma added the previous night’s skimmed milk to the cooled milk from the morning milking and put it on the stove to heat.
• A bit of rennet inside a cloth is soaked in warm water.
• Once the milk is warm, she squeezes all of the water out of the rennet in the cloth.
• She adds the rennet water to the milk and stirs it well.
• The milk mixture is left in a warm place by the stove until it thickens to a quivering mass.
• The mass was cut with a long knife into cubes.
• The cubes were allowed to sit until the curb separated from the whey.
• The curds and whey were placed in a cloth and allowed to drain.
• When all of the whey was drained, the curds were placed in a pan and salted.
• The curds were then placed in the cheese hoop to be pressed.
• Once all the whey had been pressed out, Ma trimmed the cheese, put a tight cloth around it, and buttered it.
• Each day, she wiped the cheese with a wet cloth and rubbed it with butter until the cheese was ripe and had a hard rind on it.

2. Collecting Honey: Write down how Pa collected the honey.

• Pa found a bee tree.
• He had to scare away a bear that was eating the honey.
• He chopped down the tree and split it open.
• He removed the honey and honey comb from the tree.
• He brought it home in buckets.

Chapter Ten Components
Chapter Eleven
1. Harvesting Grain: Describe the process of harvesting the oats.

• Pa and Uncle Henry cut down the oats with cradles.
• They gathered the oats into piles.
• They took the piles and bound them up.
• After they had seven bundles, they stood five bundles upright and spread two bundles on top to act as a roof.

Chapter Eleven Components
Chapter Twelve
1. Straw Hats: Describe how Ma made the straw hats.

• Ma soaked the straw in water to soften it.
• She braided the straw together.
• She added new strands as she got to the end of the current strand.
• As she continued braiding, the completed part of the braid was placed back in the water.
• When she had enough straw braided, she sew the braid together round and round to make the hat.
• She tightened and loosened the tension according to where she was in the hat.
• At the end, she cut the end of the braid and quickly sewed it so the braid wouldn’t come undone.

Chapter Twelve Components
Additional Booklets:

Big Woods Recipes: use index cards or print recipe cards to record recipes. Place in Big Woods Recipe Pocket.
Recipes and Recipe Pocket Components
My Pioneer Story: write a story about living in the Big Woods.
Snow Fun: compare your winter activities with those of Laura and Mary.
My Pioneer Story and Snow Fun Components
Vocabulary: define any words with which you aren’t familiar.
Vocabulary