Rousing early I rise

In the senior American literature class that I'm teaching, we've been reading portions of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's arguably most famous work, The Song of Hiawatha. Largely and loosely based Indian stories and lore, this epic poem is written in unrhymed trochaic tetrameter, an unusual meter for English-language poetry. Because my students seemed not to appreciate the metrics of the poem, I decided to have a little fun and have them compose poems of their own in trochaic tetrameter to read in class. And just for fun, I took a stab at it too.

A little more time and polishing, and I'm sure it could be better. It's a little rough on the meter and a bit stream-of-consciousness. But again, just for fun, I thought I'd share. Enjoy!

Rousing early I rise; daybreak

meets me, bleary-vised bumbler,

lacking coffee, caffeine, needed

jolt of power. Goats with gruff voice

greet me, ears of mine assaulting

bah-ing, bleating, strongly urging

me to feed them, hunger of theirs

'suaging, bellies of theirs filling.

Slow are my movements, still slower

do I rise, but faster comes their

pleading. More insistant, more and

more incessant, pressing 'gainst my

will and wits, it thrusts me up—and

out of doors—and into the morning

sunshine. What am I to do now?

Can one sleep when waked from slumber?

Can one slumber when now roused from sleep?

No—indeed not! For one must rise,

hap'ly wakened, hapless driven,

simple feed-source—that's all I must be.

Morning, then, I greet thee—yes, and

goats, I feed thee. Essence actuated,

yes, and so I am, and ev'n so are you.

The school year has begun.

School is in session here at Kleinshire. St. Therese's little flowers have been busy!

The first week I was happy with all the boys accomplished. I have a guideline as I stated in an earlier post. The guideline is a definitely not set in stone. We went to Mass Friday morning instead of Wednesday Evening. One morning instead of starting at 9am, we spent over an hour out in the pasture. We watched piggies, and played with the goats. I trimmed the hooves of some of the goats. The boys ran races and picked flowers. It was purely a delight for all of us to spend the cool morning romping and exploring in the pasture. I am not sure if that was what prompted a man in a truck to stop and ask if he could take our picture. The boys must have been picturesque. I said it was okay. Then Franz latter made me worry that maybe it was a bad idea to let the man take a picture. I think the fact that he stopped and asked for permission, that hopefully he wasn't some crazy person. Who knows, it is frustrating that we feel such a need to be suspicious now days as to a person's intentions. I had Chrysogonus on my back in the backpack. Most days Chrysogonus rides on my back in the pack.

Can you guess where Edelweiss is? Clue: her white ear is visible behind one of the other goats back.

Too, I am starting to teach the boys and myself the plants and trees on our property. Partly what prompted this immediate desire is that the day before the pasture excursion, Cletus ate poke berries. I heard him exclaim, "these blueberries not ripe." That clued me into the fact that he ate something. The only thing he was next to was a poke berry, and he had the purple juice on his lips. I hurriedly looked it up, because I did not know what a poke berry was. The plant is toxic, but the fruit is the least toxic part. I called poison control for the first time. I have activated charcoal on hand but have never had to use it. I did not have to use it as Cletus must not have really ate much. He only had a little bit of an upset tummy. It is an understatement to say that Cletus is a busy body.

Cletus opening the gate for Franz

This week has also already had some excitement. Cyprian decided to try and knock down a bee nest. NOT A GOOD IDEA! When Cyprian was a toddler in Texas, he stepped on a bee nest. He was stung so many times that we brought him into Urgent Care as a precaution. I have a brother who is allergic to certain bees. So needless to say, it makes me nervous when someone gets stung. Baking soda can work wonders. When it happened I was doing animal chores and I heard Cyprian cry out loud that he got stung. I ran him inside and asked where he was stung. He pointed by his eye. So I wet it and applied baking soda. I also gave him a frozen pack. I told him to rest where I could see and hear him while I went to finish my chores. He was sitting on the deck when ten minutes later I noticed from the barn that his eye was looking swollen. I said, "Cyprian, is your eye swelling." He said,"yes, I was stung on the eye." I had not put the baking soda on his eyelid because he had said beside the eye. I went and got more baking soda and put it on the eye lid were the sting was. I asked Cyprian why he told me beside the eye. His replied, "It hurt so bad I didn't want you to touch it."  BOYS....

BEEware of the bees!

So, so far we are having a good start to the school year. Cyprian, Clement, and Cletus have been doing prayers, the pledge of allegiance, drawing, storytime (Little house in the Big Woods), phonics, colors, and shapes together. Clement has also been doing handwriting (letters sent in the mail, psalms), recognizing and sounding out the ABC's, and counting and recognizing numbers. Cyprian is doing the Abeka math 1, 100 Easy lessons to reading and the McGuffy's First Eclectic Reader, Catechism memorization and understanding, and handwriting (letters sent in the mail, psalms). Cyprian and Clement have rememorized "Happy Thought, and "Rain," by Robert Louis Stevenson, they can sing "Are you Sleeping." Even with all the exciting things the boys think of doing to make me a bit anxious. I am happily taking it one day at a time. I have some lesson plans in place and so far it seems to be working. What is fun is I find more ideas as we work.

Though he may be young, Chrysogonus is busy working on his skills too. He is officially crawling, sitting up, starting to eat food, has two teeth, finds his brothers hilarious, and chatters up a storm. His is an adorable chump! All the older boys adore Chrysogonus.

Chrysogonus is six months old!

Picture of Clement holding one of his cat Siena's kittens, courtesy of Cyprian.

Snowy is maturing into a nice looking dog.

Kittens! These kitties need to find new homes soon!

Breeding like...

...rabbits. That's how the phrase goes. But here at Kleinshire we are more concerned, at least at present, with breeding goats. It's actually not much harder to get goats to multiply than rabbits. In fact, we've found that oftentimes the hardest part of breeding goats, especially when the bucks are in rut, is actually preventing the breeding that you don't want to occur. This is especially the case with our main herd sire, Oreo, who is living up to his reputation--in the words of his former owner, he "gets the job done."

This is actually a picture from last August's breeding. This year we're hoping that Rocky successfully covered Caroline.

In his desperation to "get the job done," Oreo has recently taken to daring and dramatic escapes that would put the most famous of prison escapees to shame. He actually jump-started our breeding plan by jumping the fence a few weeks ago. Though we caught him within minutes, he was happily wooing Tam, whom we emphatically had decided not to breed to Oreo this time.

Oreo is an excellent sire, and for the most part we're happy to let him have his way with the does. He has an excellent pedigree, together with a large, strong build and, except when he is in rut, a calm, docile temperament. We retained a very nice doeling from the twins he threw for Caroline last winter, whom we've named Lucia. The triplets from Tam and the single he threw for Edel sold for nice prices as well. But we are also trying to be intentional and selective as we work to bring out the best traits in each goat.

We noticed, for example, that Oreo's slightly toed-out legs carried over into Lucia's own build. So, our plan this year calls for Caroline to breed with our other buck, Rocky. Another goat with an excellent pedigree, Rocky has a very desirable "dairy" build. Rosemary describes his legs as "square and clean." We're also hoping to get a few does from Caroline who have more supple udders. Although Caroline gives plenty of milk, the fibrousness of her udder makes her difficult to milk out completely.

So, after Oreo's leap of love caused us to leap into action ourselves, we put Caroline with Rocky. For her part, Tam showed ample signs of still being in heat. Nigerian Meadows generously offered us the services of a buck of theirs, Donkey. Tam already has a large, supple, well-attached udder, and we were hoping to complement these positive traits with Donkey's wide escutcheon. Donkey did attempt to cover Tam, but we'll just have to wait and see whether the kids are his or Oreo's.

As for Edel, our other Nigerian currently in milk, we left her to a very happy Oreo. Though she is also a nice-looking, registered Nigerian who gives plenty of milk, her appearance is a little on the stocky side, perhaps even a little like a pigmy goat. Hopefully Oreo's larger, powerful build carries over into Edel's kids. It certainly did last year when Edel's single buckling sold at a very nice price as a potential future herd sire. This buckling looked great when the purchasers brought him back this summer to be tattooed.

After we waited a few days to ensure that these pairings "took," we separated our young Saanen, Belle, and the other doelings who are too young to be bred and left the two bucks in the main pasture for awhile. Most likely Oreo also covered Dreamer, our new Alpine doe, at this time. Full-sized goats don't cycle every three weeks or so like Nigerians, but the presence of a buck can throw them into heat. Since Dreamer showed the characteristic signs, there's a good chance that she is all set as well. Her offspring will be "mini-Alpines" and will be an important component of our dairy herd as we look to begin selling milk in the spring.

And that's our breeding season in a nutshell. We'll be drawing blood soon, and maybe we'll be able to test for pregnancy at that time. It would be good to make sure everybody is all set. Since gestation is about five months long for goats, it could be a busy Christmas!

In anticipation of starting School on Monday

Planning a school year can be daunting. I am by nature a perfectionist. My life is not perfect. So, I have to learn to let go and live with imperfections. That is okay. It means I can constantly strive for better, because I will never reach perfection till hopefully going home to heaven.

Let's get this school year rolling! How to for me.....

First, we have named our school St. Therese's Little Flowers and registered with the state. At this point I have been reading several books. Currently I am reading Home Education Volume One: By Charlotte Mason, Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum: By Laura Berquist, Honey For a Child's Heart: By Gladys Hunt,A Catholic Homeschool Treasury. My other big resource is http://www.amblesideonline.org/New.shtml. Also valuable, is talking to veteran home schooling moms. 

This is a layout of what I have come up with for a guideline. It is definitely subject to change as I see fit.

During the week Monday through Thursday is school work days. 

Monday: 6am Animal chores, 7:30am Breakfast, 8am clean up/play, 9am Math, 9:30am Phonics, 10:30am Religion, 11:00am Poetry, 11:30am Lunch, Noon Recess, 1pm Naptime, 2pm Computer/Play/Phy ed., 3pm Literature/Music, 4pm Animal chores, 5pm Make supper, 6pm Supper, then milk goats, 7pm clean up, ready kids for bed, play monster/storytime, 8pm Rosary/bedtime, 9pm my and Franz's time to unwind, 10pm bedtime for me:') 

The only thing that will change is that Monday through Thursday at 11am. Monday it is Poetry, Tuesday Art, Wednesday (Something Special0 I will choose what ever I feel like, Thursday 

Poetry. 

Cyprian sporting his new reading glasses. He may out grow the need for them. I wore reading glasses for a short time as a child.

Basic Curriculum is religion, reading, writing, and arithmetic. Religion: Cyprian is learning from the catechism, we will read the children's Bible, study a saint and virtue each week, go to daily mass once during the week (probably Wednesday evening at 6pm), learn prayers in Latin, etc. Reading I am using: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, simple readers (still gathering good books). Writing: choosing a passage from the Bible or short story, also free expression of interpretation, writing letters to family and friends, spelling test once a week. Arithmetic: we are starting with Abeka book 1 and the speed drills and tests. After looking at it, I think we will be into book 2 soon. I accidentally used a second grade curriculum last year with Cyprian. Actually I was too cheap so we worked with what books we had around and it happened to be Saxxon 2 :')   

Extras: hands on science being outside exploring and understanding our surroundings and sketching them, making simple experiments and reading (nature study). History: reading books and relating to today's current events, projects in history about important people and incorporating geography. Art study of a composer and his works each month of the school year, making a lot of artwork ourselves. Music reading about a specific composer each month and listening to his works. Basic piano instruction and play, learning hymns and folk songs. Literature is all the various subjects readings and also making sure to have a good story book for story time. Building projects, hands on creations. 4H showing goats and participating in events. Museum visits, we fortunately have great access here. Field trips yet to be determined. Clement will be going to the Good Shepard Catechesis on Fridays at 11 am. I will be doing Tae Kwon Do Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 pm.

Fridays besides Clement's Good Shepard Catechesis is a free day to do

 something of our choosing. 

There is a beauty to home schooling. It looks like a lot and to be sure it is. But, a lot of these subjects flow right into one another making it not so many individualized subject times. Too, just living life is a lesson. Like impromptu dancing to some music, going for a swim with some friends, taking a hike and discovering something in nature, going fishing, working with animals, using your imagination and playing make believe, bantering back and forth making silly rhymes, and it just keeps going on......

Philosophically we are classical using models such as Charlotte Mason, Maria Montessori, and some awesome Kleinshirism! Our curriculum is a mix and very well will change as we seek the best method for each child. I am going to try and faithfully journal our whole school year. In hopes that it will give me insights for planning the next. 

Each day needs to start and end with prayer.

The sun is rising on the horizon!