While we’ve updated everyone on the goat kids recently, we haven’t really mentioned the human kids much! I’m actually a little surprised by how long it’s been since they’ve been a major feature on a post since after all, they’re the ones that command the attention of about 97% of our waking hours.

After a bit of a bumpy spring homeschooling has taken a bit of a detour these last few months. To a certain extent, I’m mildly impressed how well our accidentally-extremely-relaxed-approach is working. Formally, we’re currently only focusing on handwriting and math, plus Gabe has been working on French with Steve on the Duolingo app.

While we’ve always done read-alouds as part of the literature based History/Literature core we use, we generally saved them for later in the day.  Not quite bedtime stories, but not really integrated into the rest of the schoolwork. Recently though, Steve has been doing more of the reading, moving it to the mornings when he’s home.  They’ve been through three books from the Chronicles of Narnia, most of the Little House books, Charlotte’s Web, and of course the Bible. Right now they’re working on The Family Under the Bridge. What’s amazed me the most is how their vocabulary has taken off like a shot. It’s often hilarious to hear Luke casually spout off a multisyllabic word for something totally ordinary in the middle of a conversation.  I think it helps that we’ve been using books that were written 60+ years ago…. Laura Ingalls Wilder, E.B. White and C.S. Lewis didn’t dumb down their language to make it more accessible to children. Which is a good thing too, since instead of our scheduled readers, Gabe has been taking off with every Star Wars book he can get his hands on, along with lots of “fluff” like Geronimo Stilton.  But right now my feeling is that he’s reading and he’s initiating it on his own, and that’s good enough!

Gabe helps Steve with the animals every morning, but Luke and Daniel don’t have many barn chores at the moment. While Daniel is enthusiastic but young, I’m beginning to think Luke might not ever adjust to ‘mini farm’ life.  He still holds his shirt over his nose when going to the barn on at hot day!  Gabe is looking forward to having his own kids from Peony (his goat), and it looks like we’ll be able to have her bred sometime late summer/early fall. We’ve been concerned about finding a buck that would be an okay partner for her diminutive size, and fortunately for us, some close friends recently added a Nigerian Dwarf buck to their barn and have offered to have her spend a few day *ahem* “keeping him company.”

Finally, everyone is getting excited for the baby (who’s due this week) to come. Gabe understands how close it is, while Luke and Daniel consider “soon” to mean immediately.  If it isn’t happening tomorrow, it’s too far away to be called imminent! And in what is quite possibly the most adorable routine ever, Daniel reminds Steve at Grace every dinnertime in a loud whisper “Don’t forget to pray that I’ll be a good big brother!”