Purchased Elegant Themes and trying it out.
Implementing Modest Theme
Home Page
To change text of 3rd box, must manually edit file,
sudo vi /opt/web/php/sunrisemontessori.ca/blog/wp-content/themes/Modest/home.php
To control the amount of data shown in bottom sections either use "More" tag or use Excerpt (which gives more control).
The More tag would be great, except it does not generate a button to actually get to the article.
To use excerpt change as follows,
<?php the_content(""); ?>
to,
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
Though not evident we can use tags in the Excerpt area too.