R + Vowel Sounds
Farm Life
When you live on a farm, your day starts early in the morning. The alarm goes off around 4 a.m. It is always dark outside when we wake up, but the stars are pretty to look at.
Some days it feels like your heart needs a jump start. My dog, Barney, helps me wake up by licking my face. Sometimes he will bark at me too. He makes a great guard dog.
Once we get our hearts going, we go downstairs and eat a big breakfast. When breakfast is over, we pick up the yard a little and head to the barn. Working in the barn is like being in the army, there are a lot of rules to stay safe. The barn is quiet in the mornings.
When morning chores are finished it is time for lunch. After lunch we work with the crops until dinner. After dinner we relax from a hard day's work. We like to look at the stars, play marbles and cards, and sometimes we take a ride in the car. Then we go to bed and get ready to do it all again in the morning.
School
-Teachers, assignments, events, or classes
Hero
My buddy Randy is my hero. He has won many awards, ribbons, and trophies. But he doesn't care about all of that. He does what he does to help others. Here are a few things he has done that make him such a great guy.
First of all, he is married and is an awesome dad. He has been a teacher for 15 years and has won teacher of the year three times! He volunteers to read to students at after school programs and pick up garbage on the side of the road on the weekends.
He recycles paper, plastic, and glass which is good for the environment. He helps people with hearing aids get them for less money. He once saved a baby giraffe from drowning at the zoo. He is writing two books. One about ways to improve classroom education and another with fun short stories for kids.
There are hundreds of other examples I could share with you. Randy puts his heart and strength into everything he does. He is a real role model and I try to follow the example he sets.
Zoo
Tell me the last time you went to the zoo or list animals you can see at the zoo.
Homework
What kind of homework do you have this week?
Favorite Teacher
My science teacher, Mr. Kerr, is my most favorite teacher in the world. Every class period we do the coolest experiments. We have made paper planes, studied what spiders eat for dinner, learned the molecular differences between dirt and butter, and looked at germs under a microscope.
At first, most of our class was nervous to do all of these crazy things, but after studying butter and dirt we were amazed at how cool science is. We told Mr. Kerr our concerns and he reassured us if we would give the experiments a chance, we wouldn't be sorry.
Mr. Kerr is dedicated too. Last year he hurt his shoulder playing basketball. He had to have surgery on it and I'm sure he was in a lot of pain. He didn't care though. He still came to school and taught our class how to make a liquid into a solid by stirring specific materials together. Then he had us climb a ladder and pour it off onto the floor.
He also likes to surprise our class with opportunities to learn. During November, we had a lesson about what has to happen to a turkey before we can eat it. The class thought it would be gross, and some of it was, but we learned a lot about the process. The girl next to me and I agree that we will miss Mr. Kerr's science class.
Sister
-Do you have a sister? What is she like? Do you wish you had one? Why?
Pirate
My sister has a friend who thinks he is a pirate. He wears a red bandana on his head, has a pet parrot that he keeps on his shoulder, and walks around saying, "Arrr matey."
As if this wasn't strange enough, he also has a really big collection of earrings. Not normal earrings either, weird ones.
He has earrings that look like rocks, wrenches, raccoons, cameras, walrus, and even a pair that look like rakes. I understand that some pirates wear earrings, but I thought they would be scarier like hooks, or circles, or daggers.
I feel like I should tell my sister's friend to research the type of earrings that pirate's wear. Without the right gear, a person who is trying to look like a pirate will just look strange. If he ever met a real pirate, the pirate would probably make fun of him for how he looked.
Music
What is your favorite kind of music?
Shark
What do you know about sharks?
Storm Chasing
Jordan has a cool but dangerous job. He is a storm chaser. He never gets bored. A few times per month, he and his four person crew jump in their cars and chase tornadoes. Jordan wasn't always interested in storms though, he has an interesting story about why he became a storm chaser.
He grew up farming corn with his mom and dad. He rode horses, played sports, and was a typical kid. When he was 17 years old, a tornado touched down in the city he lived in. It traveled four miles south of town and wiped out his family's farm.
Jordan and his family hid in their storm cellar and were not hurt from the tornado, but the tornado destroyed everything his family had. His family was poor for a few years following the tornado while he and his family looked for ways to earn money. Jordan made doors, worked at the grocery store, and even sold popcorn to make money to pay for food.
It was a hard time for Jordan and his family. As a result, Jordan decided to go to college to become a meteorologist. He studied weather and weather patterns. He wanted to learn how tornadoes moved so that he could warn people when they were coming.
About one year ago, all of his hard work paid off when he received funding for his research. Many storm chasers don't make much money, but Jordan didn't care about that. He had lived without a lot of money. Jordan wanted to help people. He was excited about how the money he received would help gather enough information to help more people in the future.
Sports
What is your favorite sport and why?
Scientist
Whenever I have free time, I race to my garage. I have all kinds of crazy experiments going on in there. I don't mean testing rats or anything. I mean really cool experiments.
For example, right now I am experimenting to see if carrots can recharge batteries. I have had other experiments that have gone longer. My experiment to see if raisins will make the speakers in my radio louder has been going on for over a year now.
There are so many more ideas that I want to experiment with - making a fireproof door, testing to see what rainbows are made of, trying to see if I can teach rats to read.
If my brain was made of trees, it would be a forest of ideas. Science is radical!
Zoom
Party
Describe the last party you went to.
Sand
Where can you find it? Do you like to vacation in places that have sand? Or do you prefer something else?
World Records
The Guinness Book of World Records is full of amazing facts that will raise your eyebrows. From broken bones to tiny brains, it covers the world's most interesting, fanatical, and dedicated people.
Some records have never been broken even though many people try. There are records for people who own entire houses full of brown fabric, barns full of toothbrushes, and cars full of moldy white bread. One person holds a record for riding a broom over a thousand miles.
Some records are held by more than one person. Like the four bread store owners who sold a bridge, or the three brothers who hold a record for having cobras on their head for the longest amount of time.
Why would anyone wear a cobra on their head? Some might think that is brave, but I would think something was wrong with their brain.
If you visit a city with a Guinness Book of World Records museum, I recommend getting up early, eating a big breakfast and spending all day in one. You will have fun and wild stories to bring home to your friends and family.
Dessert
What is your favorite kind of dessert?
Dollar
What would you do if I gave you $100 dollars.
Soda
Do you like to drink it? What is your favorite soda?
Raccoon
I see a rabbit in the grass.
The raccoon has a striped tail.
They all wanted to race together.
He hit the ball with the racquet.
I am listening to an old radio.
Cheese
What does cheese go best with?
Herbivore
Give an example of a herbivore