All About the Songs from Pa and Laura online course from Music in Our Homeschool
[00:00:00] Years ago, when I first started creating online music appreciation courses for Music in Our Homeschool, I made a list of all of the interesting course ideas I had. I also received some requests from homeschoolers for what they'd like to see at the site. Almost all of those were created except for one, and now that one is here.
Welcome to the brand new course called Songs from Pa and Laura.
If you are a homeschooler looking for ways to easily and affordably include a quality music education in your homeschool, you've come to the right place. This is the Music in Our Homeschool podcast. I'm Gena Mayo, homeschooling mom of eight and music teacher for over 30 years.
If you've read the Little House on the Prairie books from Laura Ingalls Wilder, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And for those of you who haven't read the books yet, Pa is Laura's father. The book series takes us from the time that Laura is a [00:01:00] very young child until she marries.
The names of the books that Laura wrote starting at the age of 65, She wrote them from 1932 to 1943, and these are the titles, Little House in the Big Woods, Farmer Boy, Little House on the Prairie, On the Banks of Plum Creek, By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, and These Happy Golden Years.
An additional book was published after her death from a manuscript that she had started writing and that one is called The First Four Years. Laura's family were true pioneers, moving from place to place for a decade until they finally settled in DeSmet, South Dakota. She lived in Wisconsin, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota.
The family experiences more amazing adventures than I can expect a single family to experience, such as fires, a grasshopper plague, [00:02:00] serious illnesses, and near starvation. The way Laura tells the stories is riveting. Seriously, if you haven't read the books yet and read them aloud to your kids, pick up a set from the library or listen together by audiobook.
Pa has a cherished fiddle, which I had the pleasure of seeing at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Missouri, where Laura lived most of her life with her husband. Husband, Almanzo. Throughout all the books, there are songs that Pa would play and sing with the family. He played hymns on Sundays when they were far from a church.
He played happy, joyful tunes in the evenings when everyone rested from their day's labors and enjoyed a nice respite. He played in the evenings under the stars when they were traveling in their covered wagon. He played at a square dance. And he harmonized with the blizzards' wails during the many storms they [00:03:00] experienced.
Laura said this of her father: "He was always jolly, inclined to be reckless, and loved his violin." Pa was probably a self-taught musician, and you can tell that throughout their lives, music brought them joy, hope, and feelings of family togetherness. Laura learned much from her father and his violin.
Laura said, "Whatever religion, romance, and patriotism I have, I owe largely to the violin and Pa playing in the twilight." One of the most heartbreaking paragraphs in the entire book series was in the book, The Long Winter, when the family, and in fact the entire town, were cut off from the train bringing food supplies because of continual blizzards and many almost starved to death.
Laura wrote, "But every note from the fiddle was a little wrong. Pa's fingers were clumsy. The music dragged, and a fiddle string snapped. 'My fingers are too [00:04:00] stiff and thick from being out in the cold so much I can't play,' Pa spoke as if he were ashamed. He laid the fiddle in its box. 'Put it away, Laura, until some other time,' he said." The first time I read the books aloud to my kids many years ago, I didn't know many of the songs, so when I'd get to the lyrics, they're interspersed inside the stories, I'd just make up a melody to go along with them.
That's what gave me the idea to write an online course so that other families reading the books would not only be able to listen to what the songs sounded like, but also be able to learn or play them yourselves. The Songs from Pa and Laura online course contains 40 songs from the eight books in the Little House series. Included is sheet music with the melody, the lyrics, and guitar chords; a video of me singing each song; an audio MIDI track of the [00:05:00] melody; and whenever possible, other videos of the song.
My desire is that your reading of the books will be enriched with this course because you can enjoy the songs with your family, just like Laura, Mary, Carrie, Grace, and Ma enjoyed them with Pa. In the books, Laura refers to 127 different songs. I certainly couldn't include all of them, but here are 40 of my favorites that I included in the course.
From Little House in the Big Woods, we have Pop Goes the Weasel, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, Buffalo Gals, Home Sweet Home. From Farmer Boy, we have Yankee Doodle and the Star Spangled Banner. From Little House on the Prairie, we have Old Dan Tucker, Green Grows the Laurel, There's a Happy Land, The Blue Juniata, Bean Porridge Hot, Oh Susanna, and the Gum Tree Canoe.
From On the Banks of Plum Creek, we have Wait for the [00:06:00] Wagon, The Girl I Left Behind Me, My Sabbath Home, and Mary Put the Dishes On. From By the Shores of Silver Lake, we have Beware, A Railroad Man for Me, Buy a Broom, Jingle Bells, Billy Boy, Camptown Races, Three Blind Mice, Ben Bolt, Oft in the Stilly Night, and The Beacon Light of Home.
From The Long Winter we have The Floating Scow of Old Virginia, The Old Chariot, Sweet By and By, and Where There's a Will, There's a Way. From Little Town on the Prairie, we have America. Sing a Song of Sixpence, Whip-Poor-Will's Song, and Rock Me to Sleep. And from These Happy Golden Years, we have Polly-Wolly-Doodle,
Golden Years are Passing By, Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, In a Dreamland Far Away, and Come in and Shut the Door. I've also included some links to some companion [00:07:00] resources. There's an online presentation called The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder in Story and Song and a unit study you might want to try out.
So go ahead and take a look at the link in the description and head over to get Songs from Pa and Laura, the online course that you can do with your kids. And be sure to keep the music alive. Find the course here: https://MusicinOurHomeschool.com/LauraCourse