ST. FLORIAN — If Laura Ingalls Wilder was alive today, she’d be hard-pressed to find a birthday celebration any greater than the one among Riverhill School third-graders this morning.

The 13 students of Trisha Mathis’s class dressed in pioneer-period costumes and spent their morning doing many of the activities that were popular for children in those days of the mid-to-late 1800s.

Born Feb. 7, 1867, novelist Laura Ingalls Wilder penned 18 books about her life beginning in her youth in the prairie lands of Kansas and Minnesota. Books in the Little House on the Prairie series have become American classics and continue to be widely read by young audiences.

Riverhill students are ending their first of a two-week study on the series, reading the books in class.

But Thursday was all about celebration of a book series and author the students have come to adore.

“Doing the research from back then was really fun,” said third-grader Reed Trapp. “It seems like those kids back then got to play a lot. I’d like to get to run around and play all the time like they did.”