Back to Buzzing

I'm back!

Logging in and finding that my last post was an entire month ago was disheartening but not surprising - I taught environmental camp for the first three weeks of July and it always exhausts me.

It's a dream job - not just because it's so fun and awesome that I can't believe they pay me to do it, but because I sleep so hard when I get home each day that I have to remind myself that the camp part wasn't actually a dream.

But now I'm back home and Abbey starts pre-school on Monday and it's time to get talking (typing) again.

My thoughts today turn to bugs.

(Just saying that has me picturing each thought in my brain as a different insect: many as ants working to build something big, others as cockroaches skittering away to hide from the light, logic as the great and merciless spider waiting to devour all of the fancy fliers.)

Back outside my brain, I have a mosquito bite and my daughter has a fire ant bite. We have reached that time of summer when the insects - who rule the world from under our noses and under our feet - are making their presence known.

I read recently in Animal Ignorance - a book I highly recommend - that if it were not for spiders, human kind would literally be up to its ears in insects. Drowning in bugs. Eeesh. Thank you, arachnids!

But, then again, if it weren't for bugs, we wouldn't have much to speak of at all - no flowering plants, so no fruit or veggies and no decomposition of dead plant matter, or meat matter for that fact. I'll take the buzz of mosquitos and the smell of flowers over the serene silence and the smell of hot rotting carcass and any day.

So, for my first post back here on the Web (sorry, I couldn't help myself), I'd like to extend great gob of gratitude to our six and eight legged friends. And to help me do it, a little something from E.O. Wilson:

"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos."


http://www.worldofcolorgallery.com

Learning Curve

Today was the first day of environmental camp. I teach 8-12 year olds all about our excellent earth and our fabulous Florida ecosystems for six weeks every summer.

These are the best six weeks of my whole year!

This first camp started off particularly well - only five students, so I had lots of time to interact with each of them. They were smart, knowledgeable, kind, and eager to learn.

Pure bliss.

We discussed the elements of survival (air, water, food, shelter) and how to record data about wildlife in order to properly identify individuals (size, number of legs, body covering, activity, habitat, etc.) and all of the reasons WHY we want to "save the planet."

The best part, of course, was the time we spent outside. With little prompting from me, the kiddos were all over, finding damselflies and tadpoles and trumpet vine flowers and frogs and pill bugs and spiders and beetles and junebugs and all manner of wonderful things.

They turned over rocks, looked up at overhangs, poked at sap dripping out of the slash pines, and were absolutely psyched about it all.

Joy!

Their sense of wonder is a lesson in itself. More than I could teach, but something I am all to happy to foster.

So, here's to the beginning of a new adventure. A few quotes from the kids to revive your own sense of wonder:

Question: Why do we need lots of different kind of animals?
Answer: To eat them. (I loved this one. It was so authentic!)

"Oh, look! There's a mushroom!" "And there's a bug on it, too!"

"I think it's an American crow, because it was all black and it had a skinny beak." (He was comparing the crow to the raven in the bird identification book to try to figure out what he saw. And he was right, he had observed a crow.)

There are tons more, but my teacher brain and toddler-mommy brain are both terrifically tired and I must take myself for a time out.

Contented sigh.


http://www.worldofcolorgallery.com