November was a VERY busy month with many activities related to our reading of the book Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read this to Dallin when he was about six years old, and he never really got into it. I know now that he was much too young for the book at that time. In Waldorf schools it is often read in the third grade, when the students are nine years old or close to it--because Almanzo is nine in the book, and the book is really about his coming of age on the farm. This time around, Dallin LOVED Farmer Boy! We had many conversations about Almanzo and his life on the farm.
There are many practical activities that can be done based on this book. Dallin was very impressed with the food that Almanzo got to eat, and we did a lot of cooking ourselves.
We made doughnuts (but ours didn't turn out very well).
We did the popcorn and milk experiment described in the book. If you take one glass full of popcorn and one glass full of milk, you can transfer all the popcorn pieces, one at a time, and put them into the milk, and it won't overflow. Almanzo says that popcorn is the only thing that will work... bread will not work. So of course we had to try it with bread. Although the glass almost overflowed when we tried bread, it didn't completely. I think that Almanzo's bread must have been much more dense than ours.
We also found that popcorn is a great medium for getting some good hands-on work with multiplication and division!
And so is ice. After reading the chapter called "Filling the Ice House", we multiplied and divided with ice cubes. It was simple enough, but Dallin thought it was great fun.
One of our first projects was dyeing with natural products. We read how Mother Wilder sent the children out in the woods to gather nuts, bark, and berries, which she used to dye yarn. We decided to try it out too.
We chopped up beets.
And dyed yarn and a playsilk in the cooked beet juice.
On the right is our finished result. (Yes, that would be the right, not the left. On the left is yarn we died with leftover frozen strawberries that had been sitting in the freezer for a year. The pale yellow on the right is--beets???)
And this is what we did with tumeric. (Dallin decided to throw one of his white T-shirts in to see what would happen. The picture doesn't do it justice. It was really dark yellow more like what the yarn looks like.)
We made butter.
It is so easy, and turned out great! It also is very nice to have energetic children who are happy to dance around with a jar of cream for 15 minutes.
We also made homemade ice cream. Though I used my very convenient electric ice cream freezer to do it. Hey, we can only be so authentic, right?
Our final project was to put on a Farmer Boy dinner. I used the book The Little House Cookbook by Barbara Walker. We were pretty darn close to being completely authentic on this one.
Baked Spareribs
Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
Rye 'n' Injun Bread
Homemade Butter
Baked Beans
Creamed Carrots
Mashed Turnips
Home-canned Pickles
Milk
Pumpkin Pie
Crimping the pie crust.
Stirring the Rye 'n' Injun bread.
Peeling turnips.
The finished Rye 'n' Injun bread.
Eating by candlelight. I was not, however, willing to eat without central heating.
The kids did alot of the work. They made the pie, the baked beans, and the bread. I didn't know if I was going to survive it some of the time. (Fighting about who gets to use the mixer, who gets to stir, who gets to measure the maple flavoring, etc. Agh!!!) They peeled and chopped carrots and turnips. (A much better activity for them and me! If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend letting your kids peel and chop vegetables. Lots of vegetables. There is something rhythmic and soothing about that activity, it mellows everyone right out. And they love it!)
Everyone had their favorites and least favorites of the foods we ate. Dallin loved the spareribs, which are literally baked with only salt and pepper on them. Dad liked the turnips and potatoes, mom liked the creamed carrots. Sariah liked the pie the best. We all hated the Rye n' Injun bread, though it was interesting to make it. It's basically rye flour, cornmeal, and molasses--LOTS of molasses. It bakes anywhere from 4-12 hours at low heat, and you put a pan of water in the oven with it to keep it moist. We cooked it with the baked beans. I threw 90% of the bread away when we were done.
Pioneer food is very bland compared to what we're used to. Except for turnips. And molasses.
It was quite amazing to think that the Wilders ate like this every single day. It took me hours to prepare all this food! (It probably took them hours too...)
Dallin thoroughly enjoyed the pumpkin pie! He was very envious of Almanzo having pie with almost every meal. They even ate apple pie for breakfast!
All in all, this was a very fun block!
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