Britta - I think you need to include tea and cookies in a shape of the leaf/flower, yeah - you are right - make them draw plants on a big roll of paper - like a wallpaper, if you still have time - may be you can order some dvd/slides from AVSA through your club or directly - they have nice materials. May be you can talk about Africa - what animals share the habitat - mountain forests - some rare mountain gorillas? The disappearing habitat in a wild - because of the humans cutting forests and turning the land into the fields - so no Avs can survive in a sun... AVSA encourages people to keep AV species at home to save them and invests in preserving habitat in a wild. Tough... Irina

"One last thing is for the student to know why their experiment is important in the real world." One of my problems with the original hypothesis of which kitchen scraps would a worm prefer is how that makes a difference. It's not practical to separate food scraps into separate components. You might show that worms prefer watermelon rinds to beans but have you ever heard anyone complain about the amount of watermelon rinds causing problems at the landfill even after the 4th of July picnic? In this world of 'going green', I think I'd look at items that do present problems at the landfill but should not. A recycling company wants the easy to recycle stuff like newspaper, magazines, junkmail and old telephone books. Even in our city where we now have an active recycling initiative for paper and plastic we have things that are routinely sent to the landfill. A couple things come to mind. One is the papertowels from a restaurant or airport restroom. You could probably even get the information from the airport to compute the tonnage of waste paper they deal with. Another is disposable diapers -even though human waste is probably not something I would think a young child should be exposed to. And I'm not sure how well the worms can handle decomposing diapers anyway. A better choice would be lawn scraps. Particularly now that this is the time of year people will sending tons to the landfill instead of composting it themselves. You could even separate the lawn refuse into pure grass clippings vs chipped shrubbery scraps. I am aware that these will heat up and all that but you can do a week of precomposting them all after innoculating them with a measured amount of casting tea before adding the worms. The experiment would then not be a preference study but rather one of efficiency. Perhaps a mixture as another variable. After a specified time, sift the vermicompost for castings and compare with unprocessed material. You can do both bulk and weight comparisons.

I watch it each week. In the first hour tonight I knew all the answers with the Dallas fan except the last one; and now I can't even think what it was. I was talking to a Middle School teacher a few days ago as we were waiting in the doctor's office. He said something to the effect that kids in kindergarten are being taught what used to be first grade. Also that it is all just memory work, not concepts, etc. He is not at all happy with the way children are being "educated". We've all heard that: teaching to the test, and getting them on to the next grade. Just another way we have dumbed down. Sue

As a parent and a teacher, I don't think ANY child should be condemned to spending every waking second on schoolwork. You're not going to raise a very well-rounded person that way. It's important for them to engage in activities with their peers--be it sports, dancing, music, arts, gymnastics. In my opinion, it's VITAL for them to be encouraged to do a significant amount of volunteer work (at that age, my dd was raising puppies for the Seeing Eye--I'm sure, with the nightmarish curriculum you're describing, she would NOT have had time for the daily care of her puppies, nor the 4-H club meetings, activities and trips that were involved in the project). And really? They just to be able to have hours for 'down' time--time to go for a bike ride, or visit grandma, or bake some cookies--or help Dad rake the leaves, talking on the phone with friends, going to the mall, etc. As a teacher, I'd have to say that a child who is restricted to spending virtual every waking hour on school work, is going to grow up to be one who may have some serious issues--including things like not being able to interact well with peers, or maybe not being able to relax when it's appropriate for example. You're going to have to sit down, evaluate what you like about this school, how important it is for your child to be able to engage in other activities outside of school, whether or not you can provide him with a good academic education--that you can afford--in another way. Only after you've looked at all your alternatives, will you be able to make the right decision. I don't know you--but if what you've described is completely accurate, then I feel so sorry for your child, if he's going to be put in a situation where he's going to lose a year of childhood's golden days.