Kleinshire: 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.