I can’t remember if I’ve blogged about this recently but, I have been teaching a little class at our homeschool co-op called Little House Literature. It occurred to me when Miss C. was going from 2nd to 3rd grade that we really didn’t have much of a step-up program from our 5-in-a-Row literature class to big kid literature. I didn’t think my little 3rd grade granddaughter could make a big leap from beautiful picture books to the meatier chapter books without a little help. I had already done the Little House series with my girls and at least Farmer Boy with my sons, so this seemed like a good place to start with my granddaughter. And since I was doing this with her, I was going to offer it as a class at the co-op.
So you could say I have been a little obsessed with the Little House Books and the Ingalls family, particularly over the past year. Looking back, I’ve referenced the series a few times:
What Keeps a Marriage Together, Lessons from Little House
A review of a Little House Prequel – Little House in the Highlands
Also, a family tradition
I also wanted to teach the Little House books because I had read them and talked about them with my daughters. We started out by reading some of the prequel books that featured the lives of Laura Ingalls’ mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. Then we moved on to the books actually written by Laura Ingalls. Using the Prairie Primer by Margie Gray, we fleshed out the information in the book and did little unit studies with the things we were reading about. So in a way, teaching the class to the co-op with my granddaughter was my way of passing this information on with my family and our friends.
Caroline Quiner Ingalls
Caroline Ingalls, lovingly called ‘Ma’ by Laura in the books, fascinates me. Her life was not an easy one. When her father perished in a boating accident in the Straits of Mackinac, the family was plunged into poverty and starvation. Her life after marriage with Charles Ingalls was also one of great trial and misery, although that is not conveyed in the sweet styling of childhood as portrayed by Laura in her memories. Yet, Ma remains a steadfast, devoted, hardworking, and gentle woman. She gets through the hardships (and they were many) of life because she has to. She even does it with flourish and hope, displaying her beloved little China shepherdess, a symbol of home, prominently in any permanent home she settled into.
I’ve been thinking about Caroline Ingalls and the life of the Ingalls family a lot this month. Their lives were full of love and family, but also growing or preserving food, maintaining a roof over their heads, making or mending clothes, tending fires, making products we take for granted such as soap and candles, caring for livestock and all of their equipment. The fabric of everyday life was survival.
Lessons for today – Marylike
Caroline Ingalls lived in the late 19th, early 20th century. But her struggle for life and existence and her reliance on her faith was not unlike another woman who lived centuries before that, Mary, the Blessed mother. Both women were examples of how to live our lives and serve our families. They worked hard, they did their duties, kept the faith and rejoiced in their many blessings including their families.
I don’t live in the Big Woods or on the prairie. My home is in a midwestern urban city. We don’t worry as much about where our food is going to come in, or how we’re going to prepare it. I’m lucky to have secure housing just as many of my fellow citizens do. Yet we’re so lucky that modern conveniences have given us timesaving and energy saving methods that give us time for other things. Do we use that extra time for good and virtuous endeavors? Or are we constantly looking inward at ourselves?
Our abundance of free time and free energy has given us time for this:
Instead of this
Midway through June, we are faced with messages of Pride and pridefulness, instead of gratitude and grace. It’s not weaponizing the Blessed Mother or Caroline Ingalls to point out their examples of what the ideal is and how far we have fallen from that today. It is, something to ponder.
May the gentle women around us in life and literature, as well as the example of our own Blessed Mother, guide us in how we
live our lives and serve our families.
