A Happy List from Camp

As many/all of you know, I work at a camp in Missouri. Working at this camp gave me the most terrific experiences and I have gotten to work the the most amazing people. One of those sweet people is Jell-o and she has a habit of making "Happy Lists" and so this is for you Jell-o...I missed you.

A Happy List
J. Low 2009

• The Hoedown Throwdown Disaster
  
• The Sugar Shack
  
• Julia's kisses
  
• Jell-o's visit
• Sewing aprons for the Go-gos
  
• The new macro lens
• Titan and the other ho-dos (host-dogs)
  
• Clean But Wet shirts
• Salmon surprise and other questionable menu items
  
• Katianne's enthusiasm
• Getting to watch a movie instead of going to the pool on closing day
• Slide...like an onion
• The weirdest staff meetings ever
• Jillian and the mixed emotions of her involvement in the Ad Building
• Getting the giggles at lunch
• Getting glared at like first year counselors for the giggle fit
• The stupid lights key...I hate that key
• Surviving Shitstorm 2009
• "So formal"
• Hanging out with Dot and the Sci-Fi Channel
  
• Kayla's dry dry humor
• Cooking out like 5 times in a row...not on purpose
  
• Being a Unit Counselor again
• Realizing how good I have it as a Unit Leader
• Lepi's wellness and zest for honesty
  
• Cleaning up vomit in every color, viscosity, and stage of digestion
• Cleaning up poop in every color, viscosity, and stage of absorption
• Razzle's friendship bracelet
• The Paper Source
• Staying up late talking to Twiggy
  
• Calvin the mouse in cabin 3
• 84's camp chic look
• My Keens...so comfortable, so fugly
• Duhbul's expressions that are not really expressions
• Missing out on all the Michael Jackson news
• Lauren's laughter
• "There are snakes in the grass, get your ass in the cabin!"
• Meeting the new campers
• Sequoia's impromptu orienteering course
• Maggie's fishy faces
• Spending time at the tables with 'Da Unit
• The incredible weather
• Getting to spend an evening with Katydid
• A Diva is a female version of a hustler
• Unit 1...enough said!!!
• Throwing pepperoni and hot dogs into the woods
• Elmo's sweet smile...and teasing her about Abraham
• The cooking demo
• Hearing about the cooking demo about a million times
• Trying a few of the cooking demo ideas...abandoning the rest
• Lizzy and her swimming program and sweet letters
• Bamboo/Katherine Heigl
  
• Mullet Margaritas
• 4th of July+Missouri+Online Ordained Minister+Breathalyzer=Awesome time (the breathalyzer was used purely for recreational purposes)
• Discovering Facebook Scrabble
• The charcoal chimney vs. chiminea discussion
• Twiggy
• A thousand little smiles and laughs that cannot be captured or described but make up memories that will last a lifetime

Silkworms...finally

Ok, I have been promising the last installment of insect posts for a while now....and I was waiting for the silkworms to complete their life cycle. The tragedy in this post is that they have been in their cocoons for about 1 month and I am a little doubtful that they will release their enzyme and crawl out of the carefully woven silk to flutter, mate, and then die.

So these little preciosos started as little grayish blue eggs and hatched into wonderful little caterpillars with large heads and fuzzy little bodies. In the picture below you can see the three first instars (stages) of their lives. The one in the middle is at the end of the first instar....all balck and fizzy. The second instar is the one in which they get a little bigger, loose the fuzz, and get a bigger abdomen.

Another little picture of the first few weeks of life for these caterpillars.

Here is the third instar...they are so cute!

You guessed it instar number four and the classic "I am king of the moutain" pose. I love their cute little prolegs (the suction ones in the back) and the little back spike.

This big boy is in his fifth instar and is a few days away from starting his cocoon.

Here he is about a day before changing into a cocoon. As you can see he is shrinking a little bit, his skin went from gray white to a creamy white and he is getting a little wrinkly. He got quite a bit shorter and then stopped eating.

This is the beginning of what I call "flossing" in which he begain stringing thick silk strands to an fro in his egg carton. As you can see he had a pretty loose frass (poop) and that will be the last time he ever poops. He also has lost a lot of length. His body got a lot thicker and the last few segments kind of absorbed up into his body.

After a whole lot of flossing he starts producing the actual silk and goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until a cocoon starts taking shape. This is the stuff that they use to make silk cloth and it is just one long thread. Below his head is far away and his prolegs are at the top most part of the cocoon.

This is kind of like ultrasound pictures to me...I don't really see the baby's foot, ankle, face, until I look at it like a 3D picture from 1994. In this one he is on his side with his front legs facing up and his back curling around the bottom.

And finally a cocoon!!!

Silkworms were by far my favorite insect this year. I had so much fun watching them grow. The kids loved them. I had to leave them before they hatched (who am I kidding they aren't going to hatch) so I left my roommate in charge. I told her to throw them away if nothing happened by August. It's only supposed to take 3 weeks...it's been about 5- maybe next time something will actually come out of the cocoons.

2 Words....Economic Downturn

Well as a few of you (ha...I mean all of you) know this great country that we live in is in an economic recession/downturn/cluster@#&*. Anyway, because of this awesome future Vh1 "I Love the 2000's" show I am not going to be at my amazing, great, superb school next year. I will be at some other equally is amazing school (I HOPE!).
Soooo to the story, one of my dear 5th graders asked me if I was going to be teaching 5/6 next year-which was the plan until the Board of Ed. got in the way with their "Budget Crisis". Again I digress... I told her that I was going to be at a different school and I know she will do well (all of that BS that teachers tell kids when the truth is a little too painful). Then I told her that she had to study hard and become a lawyer, or a banker, or the president so that her generation could get us out of a mess. She looked at me nodding in agreement and then said, "Boy, I hope you are still alive by then." So, I was hopeful that this economic downturn was going to be resolved a little sooner than later but then again time is irrelevant when you are 11.

Self-Concept?

Throughout the year my students have drawn pictures of me and I wonder if this is what they think of me. I hope not :S.

Before we get started with the art, I thought I would take a minute and revel in what a good teacher I am. At least he spelled teacher right...I have been the "World's Best Techer" a LOT!

This is me and the Governator on a boat.
Please look at my face (on the right) I look a little seasick.

The bigger picture. Apparently a fish is chewing on the anchor. I love this kid! I know you are not supposed to have favorites but he is absolutely one of mine :)

Ironically this is from the same kid who peed on the fence (see first post for more details).

Me and the girls. Apparently MAdlinc (me) has orange dots following along.

This could be my favorite abstract. At least he got the right number of fingers.

This is the best one...and the worst one :) I love that the boys are crawling around me. Maybe a little too realistic to be flattering. Great attention to detail though1

Baseball

My favorite thing about the spring is baseball. Ok...maybe not all of baseball just little kid baseball. I love it all. The smell of the grass and dirt. The kids with dirty knees and koolaid stained faces. The sunflower seed spitting and nachos with little bits of overcooked cheese. How the kids look wobbly with their oversized cleats and how their helmets are about 3 and 1/2 times as big as their bodies. I love the parents who say things that I don't understand like "Come on, hips and whips this time!", "In and on the outside!" and "Getcha head in the game"...oh wait that last one was from High School Musical. I love how the little siblings play in the dirt and eat rocks. In essence there are very few things I would rather be doing on a spring Saturday than sitting on a bench and cheering for the ________ (insert name of team my student is playing on). Going to Little League games is the only thing that makes my ovaries flutter and my biological clock tick. I work 7 hours a day with kids and that is extreme birth control and yet when a goofy looking kid who is all arms and legs and no teeth tries to hit a ball it make me understand why people chose to procreate. Anyway... I love baseball and I was enjoying one of my student's games this evening (they won! YAY!) and three funny things happened:
1. This very small kid was playing first base and every time he caught the ball he would leap off the base, fly through the air, and catch the ball with such great enthusiasm that he would jump off the base and belly flop on the ground, ball in glove, and tippy toes about 1 inch off the base. The runner was always safe and the first baseman was always a few centimeters from glory.
2. As one of the Jayhawks was running around third, a Cardinal caught a pass and then threw it with a lot of gusto. With soooo much gusto in fact that it flew past third, flew past the third base coach, flew past the fence, flew past the spectators, flew past the previously mentioned kids eating dirt, and into the field across the way. The best part was that no one knew what to make of it. Pandemonium ensued. The coaches were yelling. The parents were yelling. The kids were running everywhere but on the bases. Hilarious!
3. The Cardinals were in outfield and as the first hitter was going up the umpire called a one-minute timeout. This was confusing to everyone as it seemed like an illogical delay of game. Of course it seemed illogical until a tiny little body hopped over the fence, sprinted to the tree line at the edge of the field and then proceeded to relieve himself why everyone waited for him. The umpire said he had a minute and by golly it took him just under. Apparently it was an emergency and the coach said it would take more than a minute to get to the bathroom and back so the woods were the only option. The best part of this is that when the poor kid got back all of the spectators gave him a standing ovation.

Pink Pajamas Penguins on the Bottom

Matsavinya matiseema va vinya yay
Pink pajamas penguins on the bottom
Pink pajamas penguins on the bottom

hmmm hmmm (not sure of the words)
The sun rolling high
Through the sapphire sky
hmmmmm (more unknown words)
crescendo to It's the Circle of Life!

Ok it's not really that dramatic in Room 15. There is no manic/spooky monkey holding a little lion cub over all the animals of the Savannah but it is special that we have gotten to see the middle, end, beginning, middle, and soon to be end of the butterfly life cycle.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.... no that's a different story. We got these wonderful painted lady caterpillars about a month ago (see previous post about the hot glue/trauma/butterfly crisis for more detailed history). They grew into 5 1/2 butterflies (one was kind of special needs and might have been on the spectrum). As soon as they hatched it was painted lady porn in our room! I didn't take any pictures of the explicit act simply because I didn't think it was appropriate to draw attention to it in front of the kids and because even insects should enjoy private moments of intimacy. If you really want to see it google image search it :).

Here is the boy chasing around the one any only girl.
You can tell by the size of their abdomen (butt).

I have taught my kiddos a lot of good phrases (TCB, You're on the radar,
Touch it again...see what happens!) and one that I taught them was "Peacocking" That is exactly what Lucky (they named them all Lucky...I don't know why) was doing in this picture.

3-5 days after the 8 hour humping session these tiny mint green eggs showed up. It was amazing! You could actually see the mommy butterfly sticking her abdomen down and sticking these little dots to the leaves. If you look really closely you can see a little black speck on the leaf on the left upper part and that is newly hatched caterpillar. There is also one in the middle of the left cluster of eggs. When they hatch they are less than an 1/8 of an inch long and have the biggest head (like an orange on a toothpick!) and the tiniest little bodies.

Here is a picture of the first 200 or so that hatched. Yes they are the little tiny black specks!

This is a picture of a one-week old caterpillar and one day old caterpillar. I know that this is the curse of the new mother. Every gurgle, spit-up, and dirty diaper is the best, most wonderful, special bodily fluid ever created. Even though my commitment is only for another month or so I still feel like every leaf chewed is chewed in a way that no caterpillar has ever masticated before, and every piece of frass (poop) is the most perfect frass ever created, and every little tiny molt need to be documented, photographed, and then told to everyone I know.
In essence my caterpillars are in the top 99% of all the caterpillars in the whole entire world.

This is a three-week old caterpillar on a mallow leaf stem.

Here they are getting ready to make their J shapes

Some more of the ridiculously huge 3 week old caterpillars.
On the verge of changing into chrysalises.

Here are some of the chrysalises. As the larvae inside age they get more and more beautiful!

This is a chrsyallis who attached to the top of the net. You can see the silk pat really clearly. Here is the butterfly net filled with our butterflies!!!

More metamorphic madness to follow...until the next insect installment :)
Awesome alliteration also :)

Mealworms to Darkling Beetles...an Incredible Journey

This is going to be the first of several installments about the life cycles of bugs in my classroom. Thank you in advance for reading about something that not even my dearest friends can tolerate anymore...so I am a little obsessed! I can tell when the people I work with start to get that look like they would rather live through a month of Mondays than keep listening that I have gone from "Endearingly Engaged" to "2 Cats Short of Being the Crazy Lady with the 2 Cats" Anyway...I will start where Room 15 started...mealworms! We got our mealworms and eagerly started investigating their weird (and a little creepy) body structures. They are pretty tough and the kids L-O-V-E them. Initially we had put in pretzel bits and graham crackers as food but then that was replaced by bran cereal. Here is one of our cute little mealworm...

It's so cute with it's segmented shell and little pincher mouth. Yes, these are the silly insects that my kids carry around and put on their shoulders, heads, arms, knees, shoes, noses. They even make little obstacle courses with pencils and markers to put them through.

I love his little cute face in this picture!

After waiting for months and months and months....ok less than a month. Our dearly beloved mealworms turned into "mummies" actually pupae. These particular pupae are disgusting looking. They are similar to chrysalises in that if they are bumped then they wiggle like crazy.

Initially I had put the pupae in with the adult beetles but after a tubbie cleaning in which I found about 30 pupae that had either their heads or butts chewed off I moved the few surviving ones back in with the mealworms. It was super disgusting! Even now the kids sometimes find legs and body bits in the bran flakes...sick!

This is before the adults started chewing off butts!

The adult beetles also eat bran and veggies. They have wings but can't fly and they have very sticky feet. My biggest fear is that somehow they are going to escape and invade my whole room. The kids also love, love, love these (even the ones who were scared at first). They have named them all (which makes it a little more traumatic when Sheldon was found half eaten or Rock went belly up for no apparent reason) and have races with them. I was hesitant at first to stick my hand in the tub but over time I began to do it with courage and bravery.

There are some color variations. The light one is newly hatched. When their wing covers are opened (like the one on the left) you can see the ridges that were also apparent on the pupa.

A good example of the sticky feet I mentioned earlier.