Anna Goes to South Carolina

2:05

Anna left New Haven yesterday from Tweed-New Haven Airport to attend the graduation of a niece in South Carolina. I was fascinated that they were allowed wifi and transmitted the takeoff. How fun to watch! Wifi was in and out during the flight and I missed the landing by seconds. Even over the Atlantic, I could see her live on the phone.

I apologize for the one little glitch: my meds notification on the phone.

Here is a video of the takeoff made by Anna.

00:06

The plane in New Haven

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I don't recognize where this was filmed during the flight.

Screenshots from Find My of Anna in the air:

Finally, taxiing into the airport at Myrtle Beach:

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Watching the kids travelling—to Barcelona, Cuba, Los Angeles, Texas—fascinates me somehow. Or perhaps these are only images that a mother could love. 😉🤷

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Cake Bugs

My new Nordic Ware Backyard Bugs cake pan

My Andrew gave me the new Nordic Ware Backyard Bugs cake pan for my birthday and we've been having fun with it ever since. He even included two Ghirardelli cake mixes and Baker's Joy spray. He sent it to Amy's house where she unwrapped it, baked bugs with it with her own cake recipes, and wrapped it up again.

A ganache coated butterfly

This past week at school saw scheduling changes and half days, so I asked the high school students to bake bugs for the pre-K and K boys for their bug unit. They did.

High school kids baked bugs for me from cake mixes.

I bought tubes of cake gel for decorating, thinking that small hands and developing coordination would work better with the tubes. I can't pipe icing, so I didn't expect them to! Do you know how expensive the gel is? $3 a tube! What I failed to remember was that small children at that age think that if a small amount is good, then all of it is better. We quickly had to ration gel amounts so that we could finish decorating all 24 bug cakes.

Yesterday, despite having only 30 minutes for class, the boys managed to decorate and distribute cake bugs to all of the staff and loved eating their own creations.

Some of their creations:

Jody and I have many plans for this pan this summer. I'm going to use different recipes (and the Ghiradelli mixes) and color up some buttercream. Maybe I'll even learn how to pipe icing! I'll try different colors of sprinkles, too. Happy days are coming!

Nordic Ware Rainbow Bugs cake recipe

Backyard Bugs Pound Cake recipe from Entertablement

Cornbread Muffin bugs from Mary DiSomma

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Kindergarten Bug Hunts

Genus Melanolophia 
with green eyes!

I caved on Monday and made each of the six pre-K and K boys (there are only boys in that class) their own bug collection container. I say "caved" because having bug hunts can be a problem. Little kids love bugs and get overly excited. Also, with my disability, I cannot take them out like in the good old days and must rely on other staff for that. But I could not resist their enthusiasm. They were amazed as they watched me create the containers, yet all I did was heat up a paper clip and poke air holes in the lid of plastic deli containers that I had from an old fossil unit. Then I wrote each their names on their own container with a Sharpie. The school is very rural, at the edge of the woods where there are bear and deer. We reviewed the rules for going outside, I told them to move slowly and gently (that is hard for boys this age!) and we let them out the classroom door. They returned 10 minutes later with the beautiful moth shown above . . . and . . .

Pyractomena larva

. . . a baby firefly! I was thrilled. I have never seen one before. Today we did a mini-lesson on fireflies to celebrate the find. 

I showed them a tick that I took off of Lucy last night and froze for them.

American Dog Tick
(Dermacentor variabilis)

I am so pleased we did a few tick lessons.
One student already found a tick on himself
and knew exactly what to do.

The boys taking turns looking at the tick.

The other creatures they found were: 

Moth cocoon

Two unidentified ground beetles
(Genus Pterostichus)

Winter Firefly (Ellychnia corrusca)

The last firefly is probably the same species as the larva from yesterday and was shown to me after class when three of the boys ran (for real), yelling my name (for real), into my next class in another room—so excited that nobody could stop them. My older math students know these little kids and were softly chuckling and waited very patiently for me to tell them what their bug was and photograph it. The K teacher is probably cursing me under her breath.  😉

We're having a great time. The best time. It's a shame that we will close for summer in four weeks now. I can't wait to see what bugs they will have found for us tomorrow morning.

All bugs are released safely after inspection and photos.

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Buggier Days

Common Bed Bug (Cimex lectularius)

I am frequently gifted bugs and sometimes they are not welcome bugs. We find all sorts of things at school. Staff found this bed bug and asked me to confirm their identification of it. Proper action has been taken at school. 

I brought the bed bug home and euthanized it in the freezer and was going to photograph it here. But I had a brainstorm and took it back to school and my pre-K/K class observed it under magnifying lenses. They were then told to draw and color what they observed (we have been learning how to make journal drawings of insects, so this was perfect). I photographed it. We compared it to photos of bed bugs on iNaturalist and the class agreed that it was a bed bug. My job was done! It was a great day . . . except now they want a bug every day! I suggested that they collect what they see (no killing allowed unless it is on our "bad bug" list). I handed out collection containers. We spent the rest of the class reading about the bug and discussed the symptoms of their bites and the dangers of them.

Our bad bug list includes those bugs, in Vermont, that are dangerous to human health: mosquitoes, bed bugs, lice, ticks, and black flies (which usually do not harm us like the others can but I hate them passionately). 

Common Bed Bug (Cimex lectularius)

Common Bed Bug (Cimex lectularius)

I was so pleased to see such realistic depictions in such young children.

The very next morning, we investigated a Pale Green Assassin Bug nymph found at a student's home. The kids were wicked happy. They used magnifying glasses, felt it crawl on their hands, and released it safely out the back door. I was very happy because I seldom see assassin bugs in the wild. And a nymph? Priceless.

Nymph of Pale Green Assassin Bug (Zelus luridus)

Finally, on Thursday, we had an earwig. They are pesky bugs but not dangerous to our health. It was found in school and all the staff were surprised that it was found so early in the season: we usually find them in August and September. It certainly has not been hot enough for us to consider they would be around. We followed the same format: magnifying lenses, holding it, releasing it, and a journal drawing followed by reading and discussion.

European Earwig (Forficula auricularia)
I am confident that this is a female.

I am now developing a Bad Bug unit for school and have ordered tick handouts from the state for each child in every class. I realized that we spend so much time with pretty bugs—the Monarchs, the bees—that we ignore the true dangers that some bugs hold for us. It's important that the kids have this information. With sunshine, longer days, a tiny bit of warmth, colors, and now emerging bugs, the days have become very pleasant.

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