We have reached the final week of our ten week summer study of Little House on the Prairie and what a summer it has been! Whilst I do have a couple more posts in the pipeline, this is ultimately my last one posting on our weekly adventures.
This week was all about the prairie party and I wasn’t sure we were going to be able to pull it off in time. However, it all came together at the last-minute (insomnia has its uses!) and a great time was had by all. This prairie party was not just for an end of term wrap up. My little four-year old became my little five-year old this week, so we combined both celebrations into one big party!
It is a tradition in our family that the birthday child gets to go out with granny for the morning to buy a pair of birthday shoes. This proved to be quite useful as it gave us some time to prepare for the party without her (she didn’t know about our plans). Unusually for the UK the temperature was so high we had to keep anything perishable inside, so were unable to set up everything.
We had bought in a couple of bales of hay and straw, which we covered with various patchwork quilts. We also covered the ground near our little house with a large quilt.
I had made the bunting out of the children’s old clothes, simply cutting rectangles, turning over the tops, fastening and threading through some knotted, ripped up material. Professional it was not, but it added some lovely home spun colour to the proceedings:
We laid out my granny’s china:
Set out the girl’s homemade baskets for the planned activities:
Apples for bobbing:
And the Prairie Mercantile:
Gary had also brought home some logs from work which were cut and placed for the children to be able to jump one to another:
Even Raggy joined us for the big event:
A5 returned, quickly changed into her prairie dress up, and was led blind folded to the Little House and its accompanying picnic. This was her just as L10 had un-blindfolded her:
We brought out the food – ham sandwiches, fruit salad and water melon served with pink lemonade:
The littles enjoyed helping themselves to large servings of fruit salad:
After we had all eaten the children settled down to some of the activities. First was button necklace making:
And B2 wearing her necklace:
Next was hair ragging. I thought this would be a real hit, but although she sat long enough to have them done, they were soon pulled out. Always happy to be led by the children, we moved swiftly on….
The one activity A5 had particularly requested was eating doughnuts hanging from the apple tree. So using elastic (to make it even harder!) we hung five ring doughnuts from the branches at different heights:
I suspect much cheating was going on….
The older ones were pros at this doing it every time the twins have a birthday:
The children had a quick play on the logs, with T11 being the gentleman and helping his little sisters:
Although she decided she was better at it on her own:
After the fun on the logs the children insisted it was so hot they absolutely had to do the apple dunking next:
And last but not least we did what all the children had been longing to do since the very start of the party…we opened up the Prairie Mercantile. This was a child’s paradise, full of colourful candy. We had bought an assortment of sweeties and transferred them into the jars we usually use for various tea bags and coffee. The greengrocer local to us had kindly donated some paper bags to fill with the sweets. Thanks Steve!
We had given all of them some pennies each and let them at it. It’s amazing how much more enthusiastic they were towards this activity than, say, the hair ragging:
And at last it was the older one’s turns:
Oh the fun!
Then to finish off what was surely the best Prairie party ever, A5 decided it was time to harvest her kitchen garden. All of it.
And soon it was all picked and the day slowly came to a close with cool baths, cuddles and stories of Dinosaurusrumpus!
Happy birthday to my darling 5-year-old. I love you so very, very much.
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