Happy Holidays from Nancy & Boyd Patterson family

Tales of a 4th grader and middle schooler

Samantha is in 4th grade this year, and although the homework is kicked-up a couple of notches, she is loving her teachers and happy to get up for school each morning. 

Samantha started a research project on an endangered animal, choosing the hyacinth macaw because she has seen them up close. Here is an excerpt from her first draft:

"The Hyacinth Macaw is a cool animal because it can mimic human speech. I saw a macaw at the Tennessee Aquarium. I like seeing the macaws up close because it makes me feel like I am in their habitat. A Hyacinth Macaw looks like a parrot with a longer beak and a very long tail. It has two beautiful colors. Those two colors are blue with a yellow ring around each eye."

She has started a new after school program called "Girls On the Run" where she is training for a 5k to run with her daddy next month. 

Her current favorite tv show is Duck Dynasty (we are catching up on the early episodes), and she started reading Si-cology over fall break last week while the kids were with Grandmama and Granddad Patterson in D'vill.

Samantha and her big brother joined the St. Jude Robotics team this year. A robotics team uses technology and designs, builds and runs robots, including the computer systems and applications for their control and processing.

Trey is in 6th grade which, in today's standards, technically places him in "middle school" (argh!). (Although when we were growing up we had "junior high" for 7th and 8th graders, and the 6th graders were considered elementary upper class.) Elected Student Council representative of his 6th grade class, Trey is already demonstrating his public speaking and leadership abilities.

He is once again on the St. Jude soccer team, and the season-opener was tonight where his team won 6-0, and Trey made one of the goals.

Trey had a recent homework assignment to choose a favorite quote from Aristotle, Socrates or Plato, and write about it. Here is his selection:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ~Aristotle

A wise man (Gdad Patterson) once told me “as a child we are victims of our impulses, as an adult we are slaves to our habits.” To me this explains the first sentence in the sense that we need to develop good habits. It’s like slide tackling vs. dribbling a soccer ball. If you slide tackle not only are you vulnerable but your going get kicked out too. If you dribble though, your will have a better chance to score and come back next time. I’ll bet 9 out of 10 people who slide tackled will regret it and I’ll bet 10 out of 10 people who dribble will try and do it again and again and again. To me this quote is more than wisdom its inspiration. -TP

 

Cousin time

Wise words

"Doing art, loving art and sharing art, you can never, ever mess up." -Samantha Patterson, May 20, 2013

Track and Tennis

This Spring both kids added a new sport they had never tried before! Samantha signed up for the St. Jude School Elementary Track Team (grades 3-5), and Trey joined the St. Jude Middle School Tennis Team (grades 5-8). We have spent a lot of afternoons on the tennis courts and track field, and both kids are sad to see their respective seasons  come to an end. I have a feeling some of our summer activities will involve tennis and running.

Piano recital special effects

Today was a stormy soggy mess of a rainy day, and we were grateful to have Trey's annual piano recital to look forward to this afternoon. This year Trey played two songs: Midna's Lament, a song from the Zelda video game, and Mozart's Alla Turca.

Painting club house at the farm

It was a beautiful day at the farm but we spent quite a bit of time indoors painting and decorating the old clubhouse on the farm. We had a lot of fun, especially in creating a secret knock and choosing officers for our club: