Animals at Our Barn

You've seen some of our pictures, but I'm going to describe what's happened on our trip so far.

On Monday, we started out with a place that's easy.  It was the Heifer Barn.  A heifer is a cow that has not had a calf yet.  It's also already older than one year.  We fed them and petted them.  All of the heifers are cows (girls), except there is one bull named Martini.  He is there to get the heifers pregnant.

There are also calves in another part of the farm who are almost heifers.  They are outside of the heifer barn and they are already weaned off of milk.  They only eat grains and pellets and hay.  Before they go to that space, while they are weaning, they are kept in the small animal barn.  That's where all of the small animals and the non-weaned calves are.

There are five calves in the small animal barn that we take care of.  All five names are Infinity, BlackJack, Vegas, Josie, and Raspberry.  The five calves each have their own pen.  Also, they have different eating plans because they're at different stages of weaning off of milk.  Some eat more grain than milk, and that's usually when they're older.

There are other small animals in the small animal barn: Lucky the bunny, Clementine the pig, goats, chicks, and ducks.  The goats have names.  They are Aunt Tootsie, Eva, Zach, Cody, and Aurora.

There's also a dairy barn with Jersey cows.  The dairy barn cows are different from the heifers because the dairy barn cows have already had a calf and the heifers have not had a calf yet.  The dairy barn cows get milked about seven minutes two times a day.  They often get milked by machines rather than by hand.  They do that because it's faster on the machine and the hand way takes longer.

These are a few of the heifers.

This is me and a heifer that has the same name as my mom.

This is Anette smiling for the camera.

Life in the 1600s in Massachusetts

Pilgrims were the first Europeans to arrive in Massachusetts in 1630. The Native Americans were there before them. Native Americans taught them how to plant crops such as beans and corn. If the Native Americans did not teach them how to plant crops a lot more pilgrims would've died.

Traders from different towns transported many things down the river to the harbor.  Massachusetts had a trade network called the “Triangular Trade.” They traded slaves so they can buy molasses. They used molasses to make rum. They took slaves to the West Indies to sell them.

We read about the first colonies and took notes on the vocabulary and what we learned.

This is a map that was in our book that shows where the first colonies were.

These people were Puritans. They lived in small towns. They dressed in simple clothes, because there was laws against wearing  fancy clothes. The Puritans governed them selves by making fair laws that the others could agree on. People who disobeyed the laws or rules were punished and usually whipped. Puritans disliked those laws and rules. In about 1563 Puritans decided they wanted to live by their own rules and laws and live a life they wanted to live. Mary Dyer was a famous Quaker preacher. She lived from 1611 to 1660. She died because of her beliefs. "Mary Dyer's death led to many protests against the anti-Quaker laws in Massachusetts." (p.26)  Mary Dyer's death made people in other colonies have religious freedom. Mary Dyer was born in 1611 and she died in 1660. Mary believed it was important to accept people of all faiths, this quality is called TOLERANCE. Mary was born in Britain (England).

"In the 1600s, life for many people in Britain was hard.  Thousands of people were out of work and homeless."  (p.8)  A lot of the laws and rules were rules people thought were unfair to live by. The king wanted everybody to have the same religious beliefs and go to the same christian church. That is why many British people came to North America on the Mayflower.

All quotes were taken from the National Geographic book set on Colonial America: "Massachusetts," by Vineeta Rai.

Decimals

Decimals, they're fun.  My class and I are learning about them, and we're actually pretty good at them.  There are two games we play.  One game is "Fill Two" and the other is "Decimal In Between."  They're easy, but they can get challenging.  My name is Carlos and I'm good at DECIMALS!