Milkweed Bugs, Monday, March 30, 2020

And it’s a…..NYMPH!  We’ve had some activity in the last two days, with more to come.

• Mini-habitat #1There are at least five clutches in this bag. One of them is very red. Look at the photograph (Lower, right corner). We’ll probably have nymphs the next time I look
  

• Mini-habitat #2 The large clutch is gone, replaced my nymphs. Check out the photo!

• Mini-habitat #3 I see no clutches. There is just one bug in the mini-habitat standing on the stick today.

• Mini-habitat #4 Now, there are four distinct clutches on the cotton. 

• Mini-habitat #5 One bug was on the cotton today. Maybe the female laying eggs? Time will tell.
  

• Mini-habitat #6 No change. No clutches. Just one bug left. If I don’t see any by Friday, I’m going to put the one remaining bug into the extras bag.

• Mini-habitat #7 I took a really good look at the cotton today. No clutches. I wonder why?

• Mini-habitat  - Nymphs - I’m not sure there is anything alive in this bag. :( 

• Mini-habitat - Extras - Now, we have lots of nymphs running around and still have some clutches. One pair was mating when I did my observation today.
  

More observations to come on Wednesday, April 1st

Also, I created a new remind group for anonymous texting. Please join the remind group below and comment on today’s observations.

Is everyone okay? If you need anything, let me know and I’ll the word to the right person.

Contact information: 

Remind: text @497h7k to 81010

Email: mmckellar@lowell.k12.ma.us

Mr. Why You Post So Early?

“Mr. Why You Post So Early?” is a question I am often asked with respect to this blog. I tend to write and submit my posts between 5am and 7am. I know that’s ridiculously early from your perspective, but it works for me.

I’m a morning person, and I alway have been. I’ve had jobs where I had to leave the house at 4am to do my work and that wasn’t a problem for me. I showed up at the Providence Civic Center at 5am two Saturdays in a row when I was a teenager, to buy my sister concert tickets (Got the front row for her {Shaun Cassidy}). Even now, I get up for school days at 4:55am and non-school days & weekends at 5:25am. 

I tend to have the most energy between 5am and 2pm - perfect for a teacher. I start to fade after 3pm and usually take a nap at 4pm. I feel like the nap reboots my brain for the rest of the day/evening/night. I’m good until 10pm or so and am usually asleep by 10:30pm.

This is the natural circadian rhythm of my body and I have learned to work with it instead of fighting it.

This probably sounds appalling to you, that’s because you’re younger and need more sleep. Getting up at 5am would be torture for you. At this point you are just hitting the most important part fo your sleep cycle. 

I know adults sometimes call you lazy for sleeping unit mid/late-morning but you really need that extra sleep. Your brain is working crazy hard all night and needs more time to get its work done. My brain is very different from yours - it’s mature and don’t need to work as hard when I sleep, so I need 7 to 8 hours of sleep per day (For me broken into two separate sleep cycles), the brain of a teenager needs more sleep - something like 8 to 10 hours a day. 

I’ve spoken about this in our class, I am an advocate of starting middle and high school later in the morning. In our school, you need to be in the building at 7:20 to 7:35. You would benefit from the extra sleep you could get each night if we started at 8:20. Your teachers can see that many of you are very quiet and mellow during the first class, your brain is reluctant to fully engage and just craves more sleep. 

Give your brain what it needs - eight to ten hours of really good sleep each day. You will be a healthier, happier and more successful person if you sleep more. 

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Contact information: 

Remind: text @497h7k to 81010

Email: mmckellar@lowell.k12.ma.us

Milkweed Bugs, Saturday, March 28, 2020

I think it’s not true, but it seems to be taking longer for the clutches to hatch than in years past. It could just be that time feels like it is moving slower since we’re not in school. We still have more than a month before school is scheduled to begin again. 

• Mini-habitat #1 Lots of clutches. This might be the most successful pair of milkweed bugs.

• Mini-habitat #2 Large clutch is getting more reddish.

• Mini-habitat #3 I don’t know if I reported this before. We lost an adult in this bag. 

• Mini-habitat #4 Two large clutches in the cotton. 

• Mini-habitat #5 Mating today.

• Mini-habitat #6 I still see no clutches. If I don’t see any by sometime next week, I’m going to put the one remaining bug into the extras bag.

• Mini-habitat #7 Still see no clutches.

• Mini-habitat  - Nymphs - I am still having a hard time finding any moving nymphs. 

• Mini-habitat - Extras - Lots of clutches in the cotton.

More observations to come on Tuesday, March 31st.

Also, I created a new remind group for anonymous texting. Please join the remind group below and comment on today’s observations.

Is everyone okay? If you need anything, let me know and I’ll the word to the right person.

Contact information: 

Remind: text @497h7k to 81010

Email: mmckellar@lowell.k12.ma.us

Milkweed Bugs, Thursday, March 26, 2020

We’re gonna have lots of nymphs soon.

• Mini-habitat #1 Milkweed bug on the bag, behind the number.

• Mini-habitat #2 Large clutch is getting more reddish. Eggs are getting closer to hatching. It also looks like a large clutch on the netting for the food. 

• Mini-habitat #3 Several clutches in the cotton.

• Mini-habitat #4 Two large clutch in the cotton. 

• Mini-habitat #5 We lost an adult. No clutches that I can see.

• Mini-habitat #6 We lost an adult. No clutches that I can see. 

• Mini-habitat #7 I see no clutches.

• Mini-habitat  - Nymphs - I had a hard time finding the nymphs today. Maybe they are buried in the cotton..maybe they’re wandering around my office (although, I have not seen any)

Mini-habitat - Extras - More mating going on.

More observations to come on Saturday.

Also, I created a new remind group for anonymous texting. Please join the remind group below and comment on today’s observations.

And, one more thing. Is everyone okay? Does anyone need food? If you need anything, let me know and I’ll the word to the right person.

Contact information: 

Remind: text @497h7k to 81010

Email: mmckellar@lowell.k12.ma.us

Milkweed Bugs, Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Clutches all over the place. 

I realized today, that I should be doing these observations differently, so I’m changing up the format for next time.

The new format will be most helpful if you remember the number of the mini-habitat you were tracking. 

In bag 1 there are lots of clutches. One of the bugs was on the edge of the food bag. Bag number 4 has a big clutch. One of the bugs in bag number 3 was on the cotton-type substance (maybe laying eggs?) Bag number two has a large clutch and the color seems like a deeper orange than two days ago.

More observations to come on Thursday.

Also, I created a new remind group for anonymous texting. Please join the remind group below and comment on today’s observations.

And, one more thing: Is everyone okay? Does anyone need food? In addition to the truck at some schools, including the Bartlett, each day, the school department has a limited ability to deliver lunches to students.  If you need anything, let me know and I’ll the word to the right person.

Contact information: 

Remind: text @497h7k to 81010

Email: mmckellar@lowell.k12.ma.us

Milkweed Bugs, Sunday, March 22, 2020

Another update - good news and bad news. 

We lost our first adult milkweed bug. I found one of the bugs in bag 6 dead at the bottom of the bad. Hopefully he/she successfully mated and laid eggs before dying. Time will tell. 

The tiny nymphs I showed you in class are growing. When we first got them, they looked like the size of pepper flakes. Now, they are noticeably larger. 

In bag five one of the bugs was walking around on the food bag. In another mini-habitat (I did not record the number) a milkweed bug was on the wet paper towel.

More observations to come on Tuesday.

Contact information: 

Remind: text @497h7k to 81010

Email: mmckellar@lowell.k12.ma.us

The Little Plant That Could

You may have noticed the plant I keep on the windowsill near my desk.

That plant was an end-of-year gift from a student at my old school. That means I’ve had it since June, 2016 - almost four years.

It was about half the size of my thumb when he gave it to me and I’ve taken care of it ever since. It’s doing well.

I’m not great at growing plants but this plant is resilient!

At the Bartlett, I never trust that the heat is going to work when we’re not in school - or even when we are in school (Remember Ms. Galvin’s 46 degree classroom?), so I always take it home during breaks at school.

In December, I put it in the cupholder in my car and then whacked it with my elbow while putting my seatbelt on. It lost several large leaves. Ugh.

Once, it fell off a windowsill at home. I was preparing to replace my kitchen countertop and knocked it off the windowsill and it came out of the container it was planted in. There it was: no dirt, roots showing, damaged leaves and it was stuck behind the plumbing for my sink. I thought it was a goner for sure, but I replanted it and it survived.

I’ve repotted it several times and I have no real idea of the best way to do that, I just get a larger container, add some potting soil and plop it into the new pot and it’s grown larger and larger. 

It just keeps growing. I water it every Friday before I leave school and that seems to be working. 

I'm not sure if it's thriving because of my care or in spite of my efforts, but its growing.

Contact information: 

Remind: text @497h7k to 81010

Email: mmckellar@lowell.k12.ma.us

Milkweed Bugs, Friday, March 20, 2020

Lots going on in our mini-habitats. 

Bags 1 and 4 have clutches. So, that makes 3 bags with eggs. After we put a pair of milkweed bugs in each bag, I had some left over. I put them all in a bag together. Today, there were two pairs mating. 

As the clutches mature, the color will change from an orange to a reddish color. Then, they will hatch. 

I’ll check in again on Sunday, and post my observations.

Contact information: 

Remind: text @497h7k to 81010

Email: mmckellar@lowell.k12.ma.us

Milkweed Bugs, Wednesday March 18, 2020

Time for an update on our bugs:

Bag number two has at least one clutch. If you look at the picture, it’s near the top, center -

that blurry orangish thing. 

I did not see clutches in any other bags. I will look again in two days. 

I’ll try to take better pictures, too!

(Feel free to comment or contact me directly)

Contact information: 

Remind: text @497h7k to 81010

Email: mmckellar@lowell.k12.ma.us

Milkweed Bugs, Monday March 16, 2020

When we first put the bugs in the mini-habitat at school they were already mating. 

Because the suppler did not separate the males and females, the easiest way to determine their sex, was to simply put mating pairs in the bags.

The mating seemed to go on, pretty much non-stop for the first few days. When I took a good look today, none of the milkweed bugs were mating. Some were on the sunflower seed packets, some were near the water, and some were in other parts of the habitat. 

I did not observe any clutches yet in the habitats where we have just two bugs. 

I will check in again tomorrow and post more about the milkweed bugs. 

With school being pushed back to at least April 7th, I’m even more glad I chose to bring the bugs home. 

Contact information: 

Remind: text @497h7k to 81010

Email: mmckellar@lowell.k12.ma.us

My Advice To You & I’m Here For You

If you’re one of my eighth graders who is doing some extra work on seasons, my advice to you is to get it done NOW.

Don’t wait. Don’t tell yourself you’ll get it done next weekend or sometime the following week. Get it done now, while it’s still fresh in your mind. 

We’ve all got a little extra time on our hands, but let’s not let that get in the way. 

Get your work done, then goof around, sit around bored, text or play around on your phone, but do the work first. 

If you have questions, I’m available.

I set up a new class on remind. If you want to communicate while we’re out - to ask a question or just say hi, text @497h7k to 81010.

Please spread the word. If you know someone who has the extra seasons work to do, share my remind code with them. 

Also, my email is still mmckellar@lowell.k12.ma.us

My email is on my phone, so I’ll probably respond pretty quickly.

I’ll be posting to this blog regularly while we’re out. I’m using it to keep the 7th grade updated about our milkweed bug population experiment, and I’ll be posting other interesting stuff too.

Feel free to comment, email, text via remind if you would like some specific resources or things to do to alleviate the boredom .

Be safe. 

Stay away from people. 

Connect virtually. 

Wash your hands. 

(Erin, this post is dedicated to you)

The Bugs Are Alright

That figures. We finally get the milkweed bugs to study and they send us all home for two weeks. 

This is not ideal. 

I brought the mini-habitats home. I did not feel comfortable leaving them unattended for two weeks plus weekends. All told, that would have been 16 days. Plus, the school is going to be cleaned with a disinfecting fog, and I wasn’t sure what that might do to the milkweed bugs.

So here’s my plan: I’m going to observe the bugs and keep you updated. I will post pictures and video here on my blog so you can keep up with the progress as we move from just one male and one female milkweed bug to a whole lot of bugs. 

Stay tuned, I’ll post every few days.

BTW, there’s no need to mention this to my wife. She’ll sleep a lot better not knowing I have 50+ milkweed bugs in my office. 

Shhhhhhhhhh

Okay, I’m never doing that again

“Okay folks, I got you lined up a little early. Go find something to do for two minutes,” I said to a class of second graders when I was a substitute teacher. 

Looking back on these two little sentences, I can see so many problems with what I said and what I expected to happen. But, as a substitute teacher with, maybe, 50 hours in the classroom under my belt, it seemed like a reasonable thing to say.

Boy, was I wrong!

I’m sure my memory is not 100% accurate, but here’s how I recall the next few seconds after saying those words…

The sound in the room was like a jet engine starting up. Slowly at first, but determinedly building as the seconds ticked by. Soon, it was a deafening roar.

It was like an out of body experience. As I looked around the class, I saw kids pulling out board games, playing tag in the reading area, and I swear there were children swinging from the ceiling fans. One child was doing a hand-stand and another group were making a human pyramid. 

Thirty seconds - if that - it could have been a little as fifteen seconds before I was surrounded by complete and utter pandemonium. The sound was incredible, I know there were no more than thirty children in that room, but it felt like there must have been a hundred or more. 

“Sit down!” I yelled over the din. 

“Sit down in your seats!” I repeated.

“Return to your seats!” I shouted before I began to see a response. 

As if in slow motion. The children began to respond. Ever so slowly they filtered back to their seats. The room looked like a tornado had blown through. 

There was paper everywhere. Board games were open and their pieces and parts were scattered. Someone had let the hamster out of his habitat, all the windows were open and a cold breeze was gently wafting the detritus of my error across the floor.

Thirty quizzical little faces were looking at me. They were confused. Finally, it was silent.

“Okay, I’m never doing that again,” I whispered to myself as I lined them up to go to art.