Dirt to Dinner: Bugs

November 7, 2009.

We went to the class today at 10:10 am. Mackenzie was back. We started with opening circle. The talking object today in the opening circle was a scarlet bean pod. We had to say what we were thankful for and share a weird bug encounter. I said that that I was thankful for being there and that I didn't have any weird bug encounters.

Next, it was time for the food chain game. Most kids were aphids to start with. Some were ladybugs. Mackenzie spread out bandanas all over a part of the backyard. Only one aphid could stay on a cabbage (bandana). I was an aphid to start with. If another aphid comes on your cabbage, you need to move to an empty cabbage. If you on the grass, you can be tagged by a ladybug and eaten. If you are on the cabbages, you are safe. In the first game, I stayed on grass wanting to be tagged by a ladybug to become a ladybug so there isn't any predators that eat ladybugs. In the second game, we added an owl that can eat the ladybug and the ladybug becomes an aphid again. In the second game, I became an aphid twice, the original state and when I was tagged by the bird to become an aphid again.

Next, the adventure moved to the kitchen. Sidney snapped some green beans for making the potato green bean salad. I helped make the mixture for the dressing with vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, pepper, salt, sugar and olive oil. At this point, Mackenzie called us to the map making adventure so I missed making the whole salad.

Pachie drew an unfinished map of the front yard and we tried to find bugs and plot their location on the map. I started looking out for bugs in the soil and didn't find any. I had an idea to look for bees on flowers and went to the yellow flowers and found a miniature version of a fly on two of them. Meanwhile Mackenzie and Elia were looking for leaf miners on swiss chard leaves. Daddy walked on to join the leaf miner hunt and found one. I plotted their locations on the map. Meanwhile Ry, Mackenzie and Elia were looking for ladybugs and found two. Mackenzie, Kimberly and Olivia found a bee which lives on a pea also in the frontyard. I plotted the bee's location on the map. I picked some carrots from the front yard and ate them. I munched one more and Daddy asked me to go to the backyard to eat the five items we cooked. I did not eat any of them.

We also checked the results of our soil experiment today. The results (if you read Ms. Juli's blog, kids from Halloween dug up some holes and we covered the entire bed with a mesh) were that in the compost side, there were no plants but in the non-compost side, there were some weird looking plants that could be tomatoes.

Then, Mackenzie called us for the closing circle and this time we had to share what we liked the most about the garden. I said that the most interesting part of the garden was when I found the minature version of the fly.

I also had fun with Elia and Ry playing the drums.