Wednesday, March 24

Faith surprised me by being up at 4:00 a.m. this morning, dressed and ready to help feed calves. Last week Seth surprised me one morning by doing the same thing. Since we have so many calves being born right now Loren and I have changed our morning routine so he gets up earlier and starts milking the cows and I come out awhile later to feed and help finish up so he can head in to work at Menard's. With Faith's help my chores only took an hour and we were able to feed milk to nine baby calves, give hay to the dry cows (the cows that are going to have calves and are not milking right now), clean the stalls and wash the bottles. They say a farm is a great place to raise a family and I totally agree. The farm is a great learning environment and teaches responsibility not only by helping with chores, but also responsibility for yourself and others. I depend on my children to listen, follow direction, look out for themselves and each other because in reality a farm can be a dangerous place and accidents can happen. But I compare it to a child living in town who grows up learning at a young age to watch for cars, how to cross the street, to play in their own backyard and not to talk to strangers. One reason I chose to homeschool is to instill the values that come with growing up on a farm and also because their is a real possibility that our children may be the last generation to truly experience life on a small, family farm.

Today for our Daily Devotion we read Psalm 103:11-13 and talked about forgiveness.

We finished up learning about teeth in Health by discussing plaque and sugar causing tooth decay and how regular checkups at the dentist are important. The kids completed a dot-to-dot for their final page in their booklets that we will finish putting together one of these days. We read "Curious George Goes to the Dentist" and "The Berenstain Bears Go to the Dentist." The final activity was using old toothbrushes and water to scrub the dirt off small rocks.

Writing: Faith finished coloring her quilt picture for the letter Q and then practiced writing the letter p for plate and drew a picture of a plate with different foods on it.

Geography: We looked at some different library books about Japan; some were informational and some were just stories.

Math: Faith took a test on the different things she has been learning the past couple weeks. She passed so we will move on in the workbook next week.

Bible: Did a finger play and read a rebus story out of the Happy Times magazine.

Reading: Read a workbook review page and played word search.

Spelling: Cut out and pasted the spelling words from word list 3 in alphabetical order.