More on Farming and Butterflies

Last week, Grant and I talked more about farming.  I also read some butterfly books, and did some butterfly crafts with the girls. During the week Grant and I had daily piano lessons, math review, French lesson (Johanna joined us for those) and cursive practice.  For spelling and cursive, he continued writing out the names of different kinds of vegetables.  On Monday, Grant reviewed the times tables as well as perimeter by doing this worksheet page.

He also took some time to write out some thank you cards for his birthday presents.

Grant has also moved up a belt level in Hapkido, and for that he needed to write a paper on perseverance. We worked on that paper during school Monday. Here is what we came up with:

Perseverance

By Grant Webb

            Perseverance means never giving up.  Sometimes perseverance can be difficult, but I do my best to keep going even when there are obstacles in front of me.  All the obstacles in my way don’t stand a chance.  I will crush through them!  For example, Hapkido has many hard parts, but I work through them.  Even when it gets tough, I keep working for the next belt. I have also had to persevere before to clean my room when it was the messiest on earth.  I will never let that happen again!

            Sometimes trying to reach a goal can be hard and take a long time, but there are things I can do to make it easier.  I can get help or encouragement from other people, like my teachers, friends and family.  I can take a break and try again later.  Once I was playing Star Wars Lego Wii, and after I took a break I came back and defeated about twenty levels.  Sometimes I cheer myself up by doing something that I like.  Often that is playing Legos.  When I get mad, I try to turn that into energy.  I do that a lot on sparring nights.  I also like to think about the goals I have reached in the past (like getting my blue tab in Hapkido), and give myself credit for those, and for the effort I am putting towards my current goals.  Most important, I imagine what it will be like when I succeed. 

            My mom and I talked about two stories about perseverance.  The Tortoise and the Hare, which is when the turtle wins the race even though it seemed like a really long way, because he had perseverance.  We also talked about The Little Engine that Could.  She kept telling herself, “I think I can, I think I can…”  In the end, she made it and delivered toys which made many children happy.  Once again, she was able to do this because she persevered even when no one else would take on the challenge.

            I know things in life will not always come easy, but I will persevere when things get tough, and I will always reach my goals.

Afterward, we had some time to talk about soil.

On Tuesday, we continued with math review, reading and cursive practice.  We also had our piano lesson.  Afterward, I read the kids this book:

 

The girls began their "coloring caterpillars"

Grant worked on a math worksheet reviewing money.

 

Grant also wrote a short summary in his lesson book about his morning last week at our neighbor's farm.

Afterward we headed outside to take some soil samples.

We compared a sample of our clay filled soil around the house, and the soil in our garden boxes.  As you can see, there is a big difference! Yucky hard to plant in clay from our ground on the left- much nicer dirt from our garden boxes on the right!

We also talked about the importance of worms in healthy soil, and then made our own mini worm tower right in one of our garden boxes.

First, we dug up some worms.

Second, we made our "tower", put it in the garden bed, and filled it with compost and veggie scraps.

Next, we added the worms and topped them off with some shredded, wet paper.

Lastly, we put a lid on our tower and left the worms alone to work their magic.

On Wednesday, The girls finished their coloring caterpillars and we hung them on the wall.

Johanna's Caterpillar

Julia's Caterpillar 

Afterward, I read the girls this book that I put together:

Johanna also drew a caterpillar/butterfly picture:

Grant and Johanna put together their fairy and gnome gardens they got for Easter while Julia "helped".

Grant's finished Gnome Garden 

Johanna's finished Fairy Garden 

On Thursday, Grant took another farm field trip, and spent the day with a local farmer learning more about the commercial side of farming. The following are some photos Grant took that day.

While Grant was gone, the girls and I made our own Flora Flutterbye Butterflies.

On Friday, we all went on a field trip to the Butterfly House, and also to the grocery store.  We took our list of veggies Grant had been working on over the last two weeks, and wrote down the prices of the different vegetables. We talked about the difference in prices, and what makes them more or less expensive.

Next week, Grant will be back to a Language Arts block using Old Testament stories.  We are now in the home stretch of third grade, and Grant is getting especially excited about the start of summer break!