ATTENTION ALL YOU LITTLE HOUSE FANS!!! THIS IS A GEM!!! The Little House Vocabulary Companion is a fantastic way to teach vocabulary and spelling to your children. Using the nine classics from the Little House series, this companion defines more than 1000 words with more than 800 definitions coming from the Noah Webster's 1828 Dictionary. Designed for third to seventh graders, this guide is easy to use, extremely flexible and easy to adapt to your child's abilities by choosing one of the four recommended teaching methods. The methods are: (1) Reading aloud and discussing the definitions. (2) Reading and spelling selected words. (3) Reading, spelling and vocabulary of selected words. (4) Reading, spelling and vocabulary the complete entry list. You can always adjust the methods to what works with your family. The companion is intended to be either a one or two year study and includes a schedule for each approach. As an extra little bonus, there is a further study section covering birds, fish, other wild animals, plants, fungus and diseases.

This precious vocabulary companion portrays the love, time and effort the author put into her work. What a wonderful way to learn vocabulary. Captivated by the stories, children will find the vocabulary easy to remember. We all know it is easy to retain information when you are doing something you enjoy. What a great experience children will have learning The Little House Vocabulary Companion.

--Product Review by: Carol Pelster, TOS reader, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine

The Little House Vocabulary Companion

By Veronica Chuckran
Little Granite Creek Press
Anchorage, Alaska

I have always enjoyed reading the Little House on the Prairie books to my children and have wished for more opportunities to use them as a teaching tool. They are full of rich ideas in science, economics, and philosophy and are also a real joy to experience. The Little House Vocabulary Companion by Veronica Chuckran is a great tool for expanding on your Little House or pioneering studies. The Little House Vocabulary Companion contains over 1000 words from the nine major books in the Laura Ingalls Wilder set, complete with definitions taken from Webster's 1828 dictionary. I wish I'd had this book on my first several times through the series with my children. I would have been able to quickly explain that brindle (used in describing Jack the bulldog) meant "spotted." I would have had at my fingertips the definitions for such words as hogshead, milliner, and pannikin. The companion offers 80 pages of definitions and is recommended for students in grades 3-7. It could be used as a spelling and/or vocabulary curriculum for an elementary student. Some other handy features of the Companion are a reading schedule for the Little House books and a list of science topics that could be used as a jump-off for related unit studies. Overall I found it an attractive and clearly presented tool that I would be glad to use to further my children's education. I'm eager to use it when we make our fourth run through the delightful Little House books.

-- Product review by Jennifer Pepito, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, September 2006