Homeschool Happenings

This week went slightly unplanned. You see, my husband works every Sunday. But, Saturday evening he told me he had taken this Sunday off due to some comp time he had because of a class coming up this week he needs to attend. Wahoo, unplanned day off.

However, he's sick. This means we didn't want to go to church and get everyone else sick. But, he felt good enough to do something. Here is what that something was.

Meet Rachel and Leah (above). Rachel is the black doe and Leah is the brown. They are 7 week old Pygmy goats (crossed with a bit of Nigerian Dwarfs - most likely).

It was time for our goats to meet. Our two new girls went into the pen with our other babies as they are the same size. It was love at first sight. So far everyone has gotten along famously. 

However, they weren't our only two new herd members. They were just our two planned ones. 

Meet Oreo. She is now a week old (she was 5 days old when we got her). Her mama goat was far too young to be bred (we really dislike irresponsible breeding that so many do these days where they just let whatever happens happen). Her mama was 100% not interested in being a mama and this baby wasn't thriving. We knew she needed a home when we saw her but didn't realize how much until we got her home. 

She had her head on her leg and it fell over as she started to dream. She was nursing in her sleep.

Our inside cat just HAD to sleep with her. They like each other so much. 

She has decided inside is better than outside.

Oreo has decided that she wants to be an inside goat. Ha ha. We put her in the port-a-crib so she has some room to move around but is safe. Her suck was inefficient and I have had to spend a lot of time, day and night, working with her to teach her how to suck. Today is the first day she has been able to to drink normally. She's not where she needs to be, but she's come a long way already. One thing is for sure, if we had left her there, she would have died. She was so malnourished. Today, as I petted her, she reached up and sucked on my pointer finger. It's coming, just needs more work. 

This has been a great lesson for the kids. They have really stepped up and started to find what needs to be done BEFORE I have to ask.

Of course, we aren't all about the goats. We also have more traditional learning in our school week.

We are really enjoying our Bible study. We start with prayer, then our Bible portion, some questions over what we read (this is so much more in-depth than we have done in the past and it's wonderful), and then we move into either a book about the topic or an activity. 

The book we are in right now covers history. I wasn't sure if the kids would like it. There aren't any awesome picture, fun activities, etc. I was wrong. They told me over and over how much they liked the reading I did for them. I highly recommend this book. It presents correct ancient history, but also shares, here and there, what some people believe about the events and corrects those misconceptions. 

We are continuing our land form study. Today we learned about hills and islands. My younger son wrote "backyard" (misspelled backward) on hills because we have many on our property. I love that they can relate so well to each land form we study. 

Last on my post, but not last for the day, is poetry. This is our poem for the week. We read it, discuss it, and even draw what we think it means. My kids liked this one. It's their favorite so far. That's good considering they aren't big poetry buffs.