We Wanna Be Like Laura

Laura Ingles Wilder that is....
A dear friend of ours gave my oldest daughter a picture book about Laura Ingles in the Big Woods. The illustrations are amazingly beautiful for a children's book and the story line is easy enough for my four year old to understand.
So one of the pages shows "Ma" sitting with the girls making paper dolls and cutting out dresses for them out of colored paper. Of course my four year old reminded me this morning of that part when it was time for craft time.
Not wanting to waste printer ink, I looked at a few ideas for templates online, and then tried to draw my own paper girls. The product was not worth taking a picture of. She looked positively sickly and I couldn't figure out how to make her hair look right. Let alone make a dress that looked halfway decent.
I"m telling you what, that Ma Ingles woman was a creative wonder if she could make her own from scratch. I finally ended up with a template from here. One of the more modest samples I found.
If you want to try something super fun with your pre-schooler, paper dolls could be the ticket!

Those little faces are so much sweeter than my own rendition.

Look at all those dresses, and modest dresses at that!

First I printed the girls bodies on card stock to make them a bit more stable, then I printed the dresses on regular computer paper. Then the girls colored them, and then I cut them out. I had to add the tabs that you bend to keep the dress on the doll, but a small rectangle is much easier to draw than an entire body form that needs to at least look human.
So, hope you enjoyed the pictures of our finished products. Thank you google for helping me make my eldest daughter's pioneer dreams come true today! Next on the home school craft menu this week..... making jello jigglers, and planting marigold seeds.

Oh, and for good measure, here is a quick peek at my own monstrosity. Just for a good laugh. Yes her hair is green.