Posted in Lesson Plans
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In the year 2000, I perused a thick curriculum guide called The Prairie Primer. Although I found awesome cross-curricular ideas, I knew I wouldn't have the energy or the resources to do it all! So I rallied several homeschool moms to form a group study. The result? A small homeschool co-op which included ~20 students.
But let me be perfectly clear, you do NOT need a co-op to use the Prairie Primer effectively. It's just more fun! The hardest part about using the Prairie Primer guide as a family was to narrow our focus. I was tempted to follow every rabbit trail, but if I had, we'd never finish! The kids remember that year as one of our favorite years....any family could easily adapt this guide to fit their family interests and desires. As always, a nearby library for rabbit trails is always helpful! Whether you study as a family or as a co-op, the study topics, based on the Little House on the Praire book series are abundant! Some of our rabbit trails included studies of:
The culmination of the co-op activities included a play re-enacting a schoolroom scene from one of the books with costumes, props and an audience of proud parents and grandparents. I don't have complete documentation of all our studies....well I did, but that computer crashed! So this is not an exhaustive list. For us, Prairie Primer covered all our bases for history, science, and literature that school year. We added phonics and math and augmented with our own faith formation studies. Our librarian loved to see us coming and enthusiastically helped us with finding books about our chosen weekly theme. I attempted one science or history theme/week, otherwise we could still be using the Prairie Primer. One poignant memory is emblazoned on my heart related to our Prairie Primer year. We had moved to NY, temporarily, midway through the year to stay with my mom while she was on hospice. Everyday, we'd gather in her family room, with mom in her easy chair and the rest of us curled up on the sofa, reading our book chapters. She loved this time as much as the kids. We read The Long Winter there with her (and it was....a record 123 inches of snowfall). The last book we finished together with a big group hug and many tears closed with:
"Golden Years are passing by,
These happy, golden years."
My precious mom died of breast cancer at the age of 63 several days later. This happened 5 years ago this week.
Another little antecdote: My aunt, a retired librarian, wrote to Laura Ingalls as a young girl, telling her she liked her books and asking her how Almanzo was doing. My dear aunt sent me a photocopy of the handwriiten letter she received from Laura Ingalls stating that Almanzo had died, but she was enjoying a peaceful quiet life.
Thus, I am biased about the Prairie Primer....it is special to me on many levels. If you are looking for a family-centered curriculum guide for students K-6th grade, I happily recommend adding the Prairie Primer to your list of possibilitites.
What began as getting a few families together to optimize the Prairie Primer activities (and hold us accountable to stay on the suggested reading schedule), resulted in the birth of a small co-op of 8 families. I've since contributed as an author to the Catholic Homeschool Companion on the topic of co-op start-ups and have spoken at the St Louis Homeschool Conference about the same. This original co-op recently completed its 5th year of studies. Of course we completed the Praire Primer the first year and have tackled many other subject areas during ensuing years. The co-op has doubled in size since its humble beginnings. And the Prairie Primer was the impetus to it all.
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