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.

Home School in the Woods Review

In case you didn't know, it's coming up on election time. In our home we have been talking a lot about words such as voting, President, Senator, and so on. So, when I was offered a chance to review HISTORY Through the Ages Hands-on History Lap-Pak: U.S. Elections from Home School in the Woods, I said "Yes, please!"

We received the digital pack of the Hands-On History Lap-Pak: U.S. Elections. It has all you need to make your lap book from start to finish. This is a very well done lap book, so you have a lot of choices of items to put into your family's folder. You set the schedule, the method, the order, and choose what you want to take from it, perfect for people who enjoy flexibility in a program.

What you get: Instructions, MP3 of the reading text, the reading text in printed format, and 21 projects to include.

My first impressions: You will NOT wonder how you are going to fill a lap book once you see this program. There are a lot of options and choices for what to include. Also, the artwork is awesome. When your children color the pictures, it's actually like a piece of art. I think that's what stood out to me the most when I first opened the pack, the beautiful images I saw. Lastly, it was so simple to get going. There weren't a bunch of confusing file names to try and figure out. You downloaded it, clicked "start" and off you went. It was in a logical and easy to follow order.

Overall Information: This lap pak is listed for grades 3-8 and I think that grade level fits quite well.Oh, and you get all of this for only $18.95 for the digital download. Yeah. Love it! You could use certain portions for a second grader that wanted to work with his siblings and even an older child would enjoy the depth of the knowledge contained in this kit, but for the most part I feel this grade range is right on track with the information, how it's presented, and the activities included. This means it's great for a family project to work on together.

I started by looking over everything. I read how to do this pak, the information that the kids would learn, almost like a mini class for myself so I could understand the process. I printed all the items for the book, put them in order, and got our folders, glue, colored pencils and crayons ready.

What We Learned: HISTORY Through the Ages Hands-on History Lap-Pak: U.S. Elections from Home School in the Woods includes such information as election vocabulary, 3 branches of government, suffrage, primaries, caucuses, national convention, forms of government, qualifications of someone who wants an office, and more.

What I Liked: I liked the MP3 that came with the download that read aloud to us. That was a nice change from Mom reading it out loud or each child having to read their own text. This set really lent itself to great discussions that went deeper into each of the topics. It doesn't tell you who to vote for but helps you understand the why, how, and when of voting so you can make sound decisions, understand what you are seeing on TV, and even lead to a discussion about who we, as the parents, were voting for and why we felt we were making the best decision. (which made us think hard about the WHY on some of our own decisions there because we had to explain them to our children).  Discussion is huge to me and a big part of my teaching method and just how we live our daily life, so that was a big point in this project. I loved the discussion it brought to the table.