We were very excited to be interviewed by our newspaper! This is the story that came out on Friday in the Virden Empire Advance!
Here is a close up of us with the tent in the background (unfortunately it is VERY hard to see against the whiteness of the Home Ec hut)!
This might make it easier to read the story:
Each of us explained part of our project to Mr. James and then he wrote it all up in the story and put a quote from Mrs. Halland at the end, because she is the teacher.
We can’t wait until we get our results and then we will do another write up for the paper to tell everybody all about them!!!
On Friday September 30th, we took down the Malaise trap, packed it up and sent it back to Guelph. Here are pictures of the two collection bottles.
Week 1 Week 2
Starting the take down with our drill sergeant Maddie!
Figuring out how to take the poles down and put them away!
Putting the net away.
We finally got it all to fit in the bag!!
Speed is key! Cleaning up the safety fence and putting the site back to how we found it, except for the grass which was longer in the site than outside of it!
On the 28th of September our class had a special visitor. Our local paparazzi, Mr. James, from the Virden Empire Advance, came and interviewed our class. He asked us lots of questions about the Malaise trap and took our picture with it. It was cool having Mr. James here! Once the story is published we will post a link to the story with a picture.
Today was another windy, damp day. We have actually caught a fair number of bugs, but they are mostly little bugs and a lot of what look like the same bugs.
We think we recognize flies, maybe mosquitos, what we think are mayflies, and something like fruit flies.
We took a picture of the bugs we collected and looked at it on the SmartBoard. The flies are easy to recognize; the rest are harder to tell!
After a rough start to Day 1, Day 2 turned out to be pretty nice bug catching day. It got up to 22 degrees with only a light breeze and not too many clouds.
Unfortunately, today was another cool dreary day. It only got up to 14 degrees and was really cloudy. Boo!
We don’t have very many bugs in our trap yet, not even up to the first line and our forecast is calling for more cool rainy weather.
On the plus side, our trap has stayed very well set up even in the wind since we redid the stakes and ropes! Yay!
Here is a picture of our class from yesterday, when it was nice!
Today is VERY windy and we had to fix our trap. We had to reposition the stakes and tighten the ropes because the wind was too strong and pushing the trap over.
We put in the ethanol chemicals today after we fixed the trap.
Today was also an exciting day at our school, because we got two exchange students from Colombia! They both have the same first name!! They are not in our grade though, they are in the grade 7/8/9 classroom.
These are our predictions for our insect catch today:
Nathan: 20
Joaquin: 0
Josie: 15
Mathea: 12
Josia: 13
Lucas: 35
Joshua: 10
Other Boy: 14
Other Girl: absent
We set up our trap today between the Home Ec hut and the main school. The maintenance people put up a snow fence to keep people away from the trap. Today the temperature is up to 22 degrees.
Our school habitat is grassy with not a lot of trees, but there is one big one by the Home Ec hut. It gets very cold here in the winter.
We hope the weather is good. We want it to be warm but a bit damp because we think we will get the most bugs that way.
Bringing Biodiversity to Canada's Schoolyards
