My Ant Dream Come True

I have dreamed about constructing an ant lab for years and years.  For one reason or another it just never happened.  This school year is the last year that I will be creating new labs.  From here on I will blow the dust off the labs I've taught before every three years or so.  So I had to do it now or never.

Did you know ants share food from their social stomach by kissing other ants?  Most ants have a chemical called formic acid in their gasters. They can squirt the acid out of their bodies when provoked.  Wood ants can even drive off large animals like cows from their colonies. They all group together and spray formic acid into the air.  Most ants are female worker ants.  The queen ant can live for up to 30 years and will lay eggs continually after mating only one time.

(we call her Ella Bella Petronella)

And wouldn't you know it, our granddaughter Ella will be presenting an ant collection in the Northern Illinois Regional Science Fair.  Ella and I plan to have lots of conversations about ants when we see each other at Thanksgiving.

Here is a soda bottle formicarium that I made about a week ago. It took four days for the ants to work their way up through the bottle connector to the top.

This formicarium is evolving daily.  I keep finding new plastic containers in the dumpsters that make awesome extensions to this priceless piece of ant real estate.

This amazing three room mini-mansion has a kitchen, a cemetery, a restroom, and lots and lots of tunnels.  I keep a jar of petroleum jelly handy to smear up at the top of the container.  This keeps the ants where they belong.  They don't want to get stuck in petroleum jelly and I don't want them all over my classroom.     

notice the mandibles extending from the head

This Red Harvester ant is quite hairy.  

This ant has two petioles.

Stinger protruding from the gaster.

We had a great time looking at ants under the microscope.  Ants have six legs, two claws on each leg, a head, mandibles, compound eyes, three ocelli, two antenna. one or two petioles, a gaster and stinger, two stomachs, and much, much more.

I walked out to our pasture and carefully dug up a fire ant colony.  It was cold outside so they were kind of groggy but still moving slowly.  Ants like all insects, are cold blooded. They don't get out much in the cold weather. We found some pupae and larvae in the jar of fire ants.  How exciting!

I can't wait for this summer when the queens and male ants take to the air for their yearly nuptial flight.  You might see me outside with a net trying to catch a queen.  I hope all my students have been stung by the ant bug and are ready to build all kinds of interesting formicariums on their own.

I know I've got the ant bug!

Those Feisty Frogs

Two Important Questions

Hi Everybody!

My friends and family all laugh at this because when I drive up to the house I call out to all the dogs and goats, "Hi everybody! Howz everybody doing?" Then I hear a variety of sounds like baaaa baaaa baaaa, and woof woof woof. So, Hi Everybody! I want to tell you about a really fun opportunity for you to bring your own flock over here to our farm for a really, really fun farm science lab. The dates are Friday October 23, Sunday October 25th, and Monday October 26th.

All the proceeds of this lab will go to the Danner family to help them get on their way as missionaries to Taiwan. Clay Danner 唐弘恩 met my husband Mel at Starbucks and asked him two important questions. Come to the Lab to find out what these questions were!  Clay and Rhonda are dear to our hearts. Clay speaks fluent Mandarin and if you could just get that picture out of your head of a tall white guy with strawberry blonde hair you would think he was Chinese for sure! Here is some information about Clay and his wife, Rhonda:

• • In 1999 Clay took his first trip to Taiwan. The Lord revealed to Clay his future in Taiwan as a missionary.
  • In 2000 & 2001 Clay led three missionary teams from his university to Taiwan.
  • Clay lived in Taiwan from 2001-2004 as a missionary.
  • In 2000 Rhonda spent a summer in doing mission work in Thailand.
  • In 2001 Clay & Rhonda met.
  • In 2001-2002 - Rhonda spent 1 year in Poland on a mission team.
  • 2002-2004 - Rhonda spent 1-1/2 years in Taiwan as a missionary.
  • Their focus was on making disciples by inviting people into their lives, teaching them how to hear from the Father through reading the Bible and prayer, challenging them in what they believe, and empowering and equipping them to do the same thing with others.
  • Many were led to faith in Jesus and one of their greatest joys over the years has been to hear of and meet spiritual grandkids and great-grandkids who have been led to faith in Jesus through those they poured into.
  
  
  

If you would like to help Clay, Rhonda, Charis, Meili, & Liliana, and also treat your children to the funnest science lab ever, click here to register. We plan to have pony rides, teach about rabbits, chickens, Great Pyrenees Dogs, and goats. We will have a goat milking demonstration with goat milk ice-cream and goat milk available to sample. Each family will go home with a bar of goat milk soap made right here on the farm. There will be plenty of opportunities for your children to be photographed with the bunnies, chickens, goats, dogs, and the pony.

Parents this is a great opportunity for you to expose your children to a farm experience as well as learn some geography and help the Danners. Grandparents bring your grandchildren! Students will have an opportunity to study my power point presentation on rabbits, goats, ponies, Great Pyrenees Dogs, and take the quiz before the lab. The treasure box will be on site for those who complete the lesson.

See you soon!!

Suggested Donation not Mandatory

Option 1 $22.50 USD Option 2 $35.00 USD Option 3 $50.00 USD

The Outdoor Slugfest

Every day I watch an outdoor slugfest right outside my window. 

It takes place between little creatures that weigh less than 1/10 the weight of a mailing envelope or approximately 3 grams. 

But, they are oh so feisty. Especially the little male who has dominated the bird feeder in front of our window. It seems as though he is using most of the energy he takes in from the feeder in defending his self proclaimed "turf".  If any of the ladies nearby try try to zoom in on his territory he has a fit and chases them away. But oh how I love them all, even that nasty little male Ruby Throated Hummingbird. 

They are bulking up in order to fly over 500 hundred miles nonstop for 22 hours to make it to the Yucatan Peninsula or Panama.  Hummingbirds are solitary little creatures and prefer to make the journey alone instead of in large flocks.  Perhaps this is a good thing because prevailing storms and hurricanes could wipe out the entire population if they traveled together.   Hummingbirds have the smallest eggs of all birds but have the biggest hearts in relation to their size.  A typical heartbeat for a hummingbird is 1260 times per minute.  A person would have to eat 285 pounds of hamburger per day to equal the amount of food a hummingbird takes in.  They can fly backwards, forwards, and even upside down for brief moments.   

This is my mom with the hummingbird feeder we gave her for her 90th birthday.  

  

I think she looks pretty good for 90!! 

Wouldn't you know it the day we hung up her new feeder two hummingbirds already found it!

Right now we have five feeders hanging up around our house.  

 This is one we make in class.  

Off to Work

I'm off to work.  

Like most people I put my briefcase in the back and drove off...  NOT!  Here is what went with me to work this morning.  

Why, 200 crickets to feed my lizard obsession of course.  

And seven Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars that were in our Butterfly Garden at home.  

Throw in three bullfrogs that my husband caught.  They were about to be eaten by the black snake lurking around our fish pond.

To Eat or Not to Eat...

What is this eager young student doing with wet sloppy newspaper?  Why, creating a habitat for mycelium of course!



In lab we learned that fungi like it wet and they like it dark.  Wet shredded newspaper in an egg crate or other container is the perfect place for the hyphae to grow, colonize, and fruit.



Here is an example of a fungi that is starting to grow its stalk.  It took about 3 weeks before the hyphae colonized the container and decided to create the mushroom.


Look at these gorgeous mushrooms that popped up OVERNIGHT!
    
The type of mycelium I purchased was from the Oyster mushroom.  I found them to be quite tasty.  Even our local grocery store sells them.  One student is now a confirmed (by his mother) mushroom eater.

Here is a photograph of a Deadly Amanita

These are pictures of a mushroom that I found growing in our goat pen.  To me it resembles the amanita but I didn't taste it to find out.  :)




See the "warts" on the top of this mushroom's cap?  That is a marker for a possibly deadly mushroom. Strike one.   Good thing our goats didn't take a bite out of this one.  On second thought, we did lose a beautiful little buck named Red Cloud II for no known cause.  Perhaps he chomped into one of these beauties...


See the ring around the stalk?  That's another possible indicator for a deadly mushroom.  Strike two.



Strike three.  The base of the stalk tends to be bulbous for deadly mushrooms.  Maybe I have a "winner" here.  Perhaps I should contact SCUM to find out for sure.  They are our local group of South Carolina Upstate Mycologists.    And by the way, I did wash my hands after handling this gorgeous mushroom.


This is my son Nathan sitting inside a ring of the same mushrooms I found in the goat pen.  If anyone can help me identify them, please let me know.

A Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzy Lab

This month we had our first insect lab on bees. In the past we have studied antlions, praying mantids, mealworms, and other delightful creatures but bees have always fascinated me and I wanted to have a lab on bees for years. This year I decided to take the plunge and dive into the world of bees.

What a journey! Bees are truly amazing. I ordered an observation hiveand got some very busy bees from Rick Humphries.

Rick has a lot of hives and has been doing this for some time. Watch Rick open the hive.

Rick offered to put some of his frames in my observation hive for the children to see,
and hear...This all sounds pretty easy right? Enter Rick's dog... The bee suit eater dog... The dog that ate the bee suit the night before I had to teach the last three labs with 30 students... I arrived at Rick's house the morning of the lab only to find an empty observation hive and no bees to show my students. All I had was a child's bee suit that barely fit over me, never mind Rick's 6 foot frame. How could I go over to all those hives and pull three frames away from an angry bee hive? Well fortunately, Rick pulled on the ripped-up bee suit and went down there anyway to get the bees. Such bravery! Neither one of us got stung, although earlier in the week Rick got stung twice in the back. He didn't seem to mind much as that is all part of the process of bee keeping. Once in a while you are going to get stung.