Monday's Here and There's Work To Do...

Yesterday it stormed pretty good. I was just about dried out here, but we're back to floating on the lazy river as it were. We can float to the barn, float to the mailbox, float to the chicken coop.

::sigh:::

The joys of springtime.

The chicks are doing great in their brooder. I'll try to remember to get some pictures of them today. The puppies are waiting to be introduced around the homestead. Every time we open the door out there, they come tumbling out. Lady, their momma, seems interested in letting them check out the world outside barn now, so maybe today we'll let them take a stroll. The room they are in is set up where they can't just come and go as they please, so we are in-charge of their adventures. I need to find somewhere else to set them up I guess.

The goats are doing well. We have built them up to a good amount of milk daily now. This morning's milking gave 6#! I'm totally tickled. Neither seems very interested in eating their grain while milking, and honestly, they aren't eating the amounts they should just yet, but we''ll get there. I know they shouldn't be left to feed their own grain, but in our defense, they are only getting about 5# between the two of them in a day, and what we've had to do is simply leave their feed bucket in there after evening milking. They eat it all by morning. I'm hoping they will come to the idea that eating while milking is the way to go.

That and getting an interest in the milkstand. Leah will jump right up there, happy and content to spoke her face into the grain bucket she refuses to eat, and stand there to be milked. Happy New Year, however, is another story altogether. She takes encouragement to get on the milkstand. Lots of it. We basically have to lift her up there. She's a bit of a nervous nelly with milking and likes to bump the bucket the whole time. We haven't resorted to a hobble just yet, because I'm not losing any milk, but she might need it. Right now, we are simply working on their good manners and hoping they have a bit of common sense to them :o) Not that I have that sort of experience with Nubians :o) Ours back north were rather like Divas!

This lovely lady is Happy New Year: She's definitely a heavy milker. She doesn't fill up much at all on her right side and always looks very lopsided with such a huge and full left side, but I can live with that :o)

This pretty young lady here with her doeling is Leah. She's not as large as Happy, but has a great looking bag and is a very even milker.

We were blessed by a neighbor yesterday with a beautiful 2 year old Great Pyrnese. Her name is Cotton. We're hopeful she will take an interest in Buddy...the 3 year old Great Pyr we already have :o) Maybe next year we'll have some Great Pyr puffballs to sell :o)

Well...off to laminate some sheets for schooling tubs. I was reading Debi's plan and following some links for Workboxes. While I definitely don't think this is something I will use for the children actually doing school work and text work, I can see great potential here with the youngers just coming into schooling. David and Emily need something to occupy them while we school with the middles, and I like them to learn something along the way, not just use up time. I am laminating some sheets for them to work on, and wwe will do a couple box ideas for the middles for free activities related to something from our school plan.

I don't see this working for our regular school time at all, but apparently many other moms have made it work. I am very much a seat-work and discipline trainer here. There's no reason a child cna't learn to sit for their school work, at least not here. Even Wild Child sits for his lessons. For us, it's a discipline and character training issue. Children need structure in their day. They are always going to have structure, and most likely, by others...when they begin working, they are not in charge of how their day goes, when they arrive, or go home, how they do what they are told to do, etc. Even McDonald's is structured :o) Children need to learn to accomplish their goals within a time frame, and most often this time frame will be set up by someone else. That's just life for 90% of the world.

Not that I want to be part of 90% of the world, mind you. It's just how things are. Our free activities, craft projects, etc. come after the assigned schooling of the day is completed. Math and English lessons are mainly textbook. History and Science have a lot of lee-way for fun and creatvity. Hey, I'd like to spend my day doing fun stuff too, but that's just not how homesteading works :o) I've got goats to milk now, animals to tend, a garden to plant or we'll be eating those critters come winter when the pantry is bare but for cobwebs! I'd love to sit and crochet, or sew just for the sake of sewing, but instead I make sure I find pleasure and joy in the tasks that I *have* to do...and once completed, I am treated to the fun things I would rather do :o)

I suppose some would call that a sort of bribery for getting school work done. Perhaps it is. Kind of like a paycheck is bribery for the work week being over :o)

Here are some other bloggers using Workboxes:
My Life and Homeschooling
Musings Along The Way
Small Things With Great Love
Joyful Mother of Six

As I said, the concept sounds like a great one and I certainly can put it to work here in part. maybe you can find some useful thoughts for your own homeschooling as well.