Farming isn't always pretty. I am a firm believer that the hard lessons learned on a farm are wonderful teaching tools for children. As a society, we have become so detached from the daily ups and downs, harsh realities, and tough decisions that agriculturally based living provides. On a farm, you simply cannot deny that life is not always fair. Children who have farming roots know this to be true, and have witnessed just how unfair things can be. Predators, disease, bitter cold, or scorching heat can destroy a farmer's hard work. There is no room for pouting, or temper tantrums, or entitlement.
Today, I shared some sad stories from our weekend. We had a pitiful hatch rate, difficult news about one of our animals, and the death of our 'runt' goat kid. I explained that sometimes, everything seems to go wrong. Sometimes, you wonder why on Earth you are doing any of it at all. Sometimes, you want to give up. But, then farm friends come out of the woodwork and offer encouraging words. These gloomy times happen to anyone who raises animals, or crops. As a matter of fact, the class and I discussed that gloomy times happen to ANY of us. When everything seems to go wrong, we cannot curl up and cry forever. We have to stand up, dust ourselves off, make any changes that we think may help, learn from our situation, and keep on truckin'. We ended our discussion with a more light-hearted talk about bunnies. Although we tried for baby bunnies before Christmas, I am not sure if our two are expecting. We talked about the quick gestation of rabbits. I also talked to the class about different types of rabbits. Angora rabbits have very long fur. I showed the class pictures, which caused much needed laughter after our previous discussion! I decided to keep the positive energy flowing by allowing the class to create their own comic strips, incorporating a funnier topic of the day!
The class voted on the posters that they worked on a few weeks ago. We will be taking that poster and using it to create a class project!
In Spanish class, the students were excited to show Ms. Cindy their hard work from their at-home assignments. They enthusiastically showed off their Spanish books from the library, as well as their self-made crossword puzzles. After singing their Spanish review songs and playing some review games, Ms. Cindy had each child come up and share what they learned from their Spanish story activity. Then, the class exchanged crossword puzzles and set out to complete them. We were all very impressed with their enthusiasm and self-motivated learning this week!
Ms. Nancy continued her lesson in the formation of block letters and 3D writing. This is a lesson that I remember from MY elementary school art class! I loved learning the trick for 3D writing, and our class here did as well!
Mr. Dennis had a planned absence today, so I led the class through their at-home reading assignment on the Holocaust. The students worked on a reading comprehension exercise to check their retention of the material. Afterward, we discussed the answers, making corrections where needed. Mr. Dennis will pick up here on Thursday!
We are off next week for Thanksgiving break, so today's agriculture/health lesson was all about turkeys! The kids learned different characteristics of male and female turkeys, including the caruncles, snood, wattle, and beard. We talked about how male turkeys strut and fan... and then we were lucky enough to see our tom put on a show for us! The kids had a great time studying the physical and behavioral traits of the turkeys. They heard the different calls (males gobble and females cluck). In addition, they all helped with our morning farm chores!
