Little House on the Prairie Wrap-up

We have spent this year in a small co-op with the Prairie Primer. For those of you who might not be familiar with the curriculum, it is written to spend a year going through the Little House on the Prairie books. It is written like a unit study with all subjects based around these books. We had an awesome group this year and had prairie dresses and lunch pails that we used each week in co-op. There were some awesome field trips...nature center, square dancing, weather center, train ride and many more. As a final trip to wrap up the year we decided to take a four day vacation as a group and go to Independence, KS and Mansfield, MO to visit two of the locations that she lived in.

We started met up and were ready to hit the road at 7:00 am. OUCH!! We are not early birds.

After a brief stop in Bartlesville, OK for a break, we arrived in Independence, KS at the site that the book Little House on the Prairie is based on. There is a replica of the house the Ingall's lived in based on the description given by Laura Ingalls in her book and others that lived in the area and had similar cabins.

Reagan just couldn't believe that all five of them lived in a house smaller than her bedroom. We also took a wagon ride out to the prairie where we had a guide talk with all of us about the differences that would have been found on the prairie back in Laura's days in comparison with what we were seeing now. It was really interesting to hear.
We then drove in to Joplin, MO for the night and spent the evening swimming in the hotel pool. We got up on Saturday morning and drove into Mansfield, MO to the home that Laura shared with Almonzo and also the place that she wrote the Little House books. She actually did not start writing these books until she was 65 years old. We were not allowed to take any pictures inside the home, but were able to take several outside the home.

When Laura's daughter Rose was an adult, she used money she received from selling one of the books that she wrote to have a retirement home built for her parents. This home was purchased from the Sears catalog for $2,000 dollars and put on another area of the farm. Rose had many extras added on such as running electricity from the city of Mansfield to this home (they were the first outside of town to have electricity). In the end, the home ended up costing $11,000, which was a huge sum for that day and time.

We then took a side trip to Branson, MO for one night and then to the Tulsa Zoo and Oklahoma Aquarium on the way home.

This was a REALLY great trip. It was both fun and packed with so much history! We had a great time and I highly recommend visiting these sites if you get the chance.