We started back to school this week (YAY!). We are studying Butterflies and having a great time together. Today we had a special guest teacher, my nephew Nathan (he's 12). He came very well prepared, complete with powerpoint presentation to support his lecture on Monarch Butterflies (very impressive), his butterfly specimens, a live butterfly caught this morning, brochures, identification charts, worksheets and a test!

  It was a lot of fun and we all learned a lot. Thank you Nathan!! We look forward to inviting him back again in the future (he wants to teach us about birds next).

Here's a picture of the professor with his presentation.

We have a pair of Sand Hill Whooping Cranes that live in the area. We can see them almost daily in one of the surrounding pastures. They have a baby and I got a picture of the adorable little fuzzy thing. The other parent bird was just to the left, but I cropped that one out and zoomed in to see the baby better. As they walked around the pasture searching for bugs to eat, they kept their baby right between them.

Mr. Bert taught Thomas to drive his skid steer (I think that's what you call it). Thomas got to drive it from our yard to our pasture and park it. He hopes to use the claw next time.

I gave the boys an art assignment to make pictures out of the letters in their name...inspired by their cousin Dakota's work on Aunt Tiffy's blog (I think it's a private blog and you have to sign in to read it).

Thomas tore his up before I could get a picture (he hates art), but here is Daniel's. I think he did an excellent job.

In case you can't tell: the D is a lady with a bonnet on her head (just like Dakota's), the A is a bird about to fly away (also similar to Dakota's), the N is a butterfly, the I is a road block (turn sideways), the E is a bookshelf with books on it, and the L is a box of books.

Thomas had a great turtle for the O. How do I get him to stop destroying stuff? I learned a lesson Thursday. I had them make flowers out of art clay. Thomas did a fantastic job, including the roots, stem, leaves and flower in his project. I made the mistake of making a flower too. When he compared his to mine (which I did not want him doing), he destroyed his. I wanted to make a name picture too, but I resisted, and he destroyed his anyway! What am I going to do with him?

Thomas was given an acoustic guitar by his friend, Evan Capps. He took it to church yesterday morning and Brother Raymond gave us his first guitar lesson! He taught him the chords G and C. He wrote them down on paper as "tabs" and told Thomas to practice a lot...which he has! Thomas took it back last night and Brother Raymond showed him two more chords (D and A7). The new ones are little more difficult as they require more fingers, but Thomas is working on it. He also gave him a finger exercise to train his hand to move along the frets and work independently. That's the toughest thing he's practicing. He has gotten frustrated a couple of times, but that's to be expected. He's doing wonderfully with it!

He needs new strings. The 1st string (that's the one on the bottom I learned), maybe others too, won't stay tuned. Brother Raymond said we need new ones and they need to be greased too. He tuned it Sunday afternoon (right after church), and it needed tuning again after Sunday night service, and now it needs tuning again (which we can't do).

You would be proud of this tone-deaf Mama...I'm actually able to help! Of course, I can't really tell that it's out of tune. I mean, I can tell that it's twanging different instead of "ringing" as Brother Raymond said, but I can't tell if it's the right tone. All I can hear is loud or soft, other than that it all sounds the same to me. Thomas however seems to be able to tell when it doesn't "sound" right! I'm so excited about that and I have to trust that he's right, because I can't confirm it LOL.

I made up a form on the computer to draw out his chords (they're called tabs we learned), printed them on cardstock and cut them small to make a little booklet for him to carry with him to practice. The paper Brother Raymond drew it on is getting pretty worn out already. I even made a couple of blank tabs for Brother Raymond to draw new chords on next time we see him.