How to use Little Women in your homeschool activities or celebrations?
If there is anything we can do as homeschool mamas, it is to create memory-rich (& literature-rich) special celebrations, like my oldest daughter’s twelfth birthday.
Madelyn and I planned the details for weeks. We printed a play from Louisa May Alcott’s book Little Women so the young ladies could get into costumes and act out the play together.
How to use Little Women in your homeschool?
Incorporate your favourite piece of literature as the backdrop for a birthday party.
How did we do it?
We rented period costumes at the local costume shop.
We dressed the table in florals and creams, washed my china, and made fruit tarts, a bundt cake, and cucumber tea sandwiches.
Without sharing the theme with Hannah, the birthday girl, we watched the 1990s flick the night before, paying attention to details.
At twelve, Hannah is growing up, becoming a little woman herself.
Particular Little Women quotes popped to mind as I thought of her…
- “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning to sail my ship.”
- “I’ve got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I unlock the door remains to be seen.”
I know my twelve-year-old self would have appreciated this quote:
You don’t need scores of suitors. You need only one, if he’s the right one.
And a lesson I’m learning right now as I parent my children:
Don’t try to make me grow up before my time.
This is, undoubtedly, one of my favorite classical pieces of literature. And there are so many things we can learn about family life too.
Like this tidbit: “childhood is a journey, not a race.”
If I’d only understood when it all began twelve years ago that childhood is a journey, not a race, I might not have been so quick to forge my way through the sleepless night stage, the tantrum twos (or threes, or fours), or the sassy fives.
But how was I to learn the important things of life without the lessons children teach?
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It’s Monday morning, the party weekend is over.
I have counters of dishes to put away, loads of laundry and studies to start, and mangled gift wrap to pick off the floor. And I’ve returned the costumes to the costume shop.
I think I’ll get my morning coffee and cuddle close with whoever is awake and relish these little women, and young men, while I still have them.
Some days are long, still the years are short. So make the memories large.
Teresa Wiedrick, author of Homeschool Mama Self-Care: Nurturing the Nurturer
You are a person after my own heart! When my oldest dd was about 14 I came home one day to find every stick of the furniture on the lawn outside the log house we lived in. My oldest dd had commandeered her 5 younger siblings and the neighbor children to move the furniture outside and wash all the log walls, floors etc. When I asked her what she was doing she replied, “We are spring cleaning the house the way they do in the Little House on the Prairie books,” To which I replied, “Well just make sure you have everything back in before dark.” (I had great faith in this resourceful child.) They did!
Does she still clean? And when is she available?