The lesson plans for weeks 18-19 are up. I hope you guys like it. My kiddo is ten, so it may be geared for a somewhat younger student.

Thank you, Theresa, for inviting guest contributors to Fieldwork.

Susan Thomsen

Chicken Spaghetti, a children’s book blog

The Wilder Side of Westport, a nature blog

A few thoughts on the Arctic and Antarctic are up.  I couldn’t locate the original article about a fish that has non-freezable blood. Anybody remember this tidbit?  If you run into anything of value, please let the group know.  Enjoy.

I’ve posted a weekly plan for arthropoda.  Please provide feedback.  I know what my guys are interested in, and I’m sure some of it will be interesting to others.  I’m not nearly as well versed on the web site its self, so please bear with me.

So far the guys are into lobsters. They get really big and really old – like older than tortoises and about as big. AV is building a large (wall-sized) taxonomical chart.

Thanks so much to Susan and Elizabeth for offering to post lesson plans for the next two units! They will be awesome, I am sure! I can’t wait to see what they come up with for us as they are some of the most creative ladies I know! I feel good knowing that I leave you in good hands!

Meanwhile, I will be packing and moving and trying to find us a place to live before all of our stuff arrives!

Wish me luck!

Well, here I am surrounded by boxes and fixing to head back to Alaska. I will be pretty much swamped with all things U-Haul for the next few weeks, but I don’t want to let my fieldworkers down and leave them lesson planless for the next month. (Planless is apparently not a word. Ha! They don’t know me very well, do they?)

So…I am going to need a little help from some of you other awesome fieldworkers out there.

No, I won’t ask you to pack dishes or sort books (though that would be great!LOL!). What I need is someone (or some two) to help out by taking over writing plans for the next two units of Fieldwork.

Cooperation makes it happen, people!

Any takers? It’s really pretty simple. Just go through the Seaside Naturalist book and pick out the important points, make suggestions for field studies, and point us at a few nifty websites or other resources. Tadah! You’ve done it! (And I may pop in with a suggestion or two as well, so don’t feel you have to totally go it alone.)

So… What say you? Anyone feel strongly about Arthropods and the poles? How about  Echinoderms and tide pools?

Just let me know via comment or email (lapazfarm at yahoo dot com) and I’ll set you up with a password so you can guest blog! (and I can get back to my packing tape and sharpies)

Oh, and if anyone wants to do a round-up post, that’d be great, too. We haven’t had one of those in a while!

Oh, and thanks a million!

See you in Alaska!

Well, I finally got some time to put the mollusca and beaches lesson plans up. Hooray!!! Sorry it took so long and hope it didn’t hold anyone up too badly. Life has gotten a bit crazy around here lately. I’m sure you know how it is.

That being said, if anyone gets to the point of being ahead of the lesson plans, please don’t wait for me!  We’ve done enough chapters together that you’ve got a good feeling for how each topic goes. You can always just read the appropriate section in Seaside Naturalist, get your field guides, and head out to find and  identify what you can. Add a few sketches into your notebook and you’ve done well. As a bonus, see what interesting things you can find out online or in other books, talk to naturalists, visit an aquarium (I know some of you have been doing this lately). Like I said–don’t wait for me. I can always catch up with you later!LOL!

Another Project week is coming up as well. Got any plans for that yet? Please do share!

And don’t forget about that shell collection!!! How’s that going???

This week we are studying marine worms and so we decided to take a trip up north to Martin County to see the Sabellariid worm reefs at Bathtub beach.

Well, we drove to Palm Beach county (about 3 hours north), spent the night with relatives, and the next day headed to Martin County (another hour) to see the reefs. We got there about noon to find a sign saying …

“Bathtub Beach Reef  Park is closed for construction”.

Phooey! I guess we should have planned ahead a bit better, eh? Ah, the pros and cons of spontaneity!

But we were able to get access to a nearby beach and see some older, exposed worm reef.  Here it is:

We checked out the reef briefly, and it looked like it was no longer living to us, but we couldn’t see it all because of the incredible waves–I mean really, really big!

which we never get in the Keys, so…

playtime!!!!

Hope your days are just as splendid!

We are doing pretty well here. We finished up cnidaria and ctenophora last week. That was an easy one for us as we have seen a lot of those things!

JBug and I made these Jellyfish stuffies just for fun:

and now we are heading into marine worms. First off, we took a walk down to the water and we saw what we think were some marine worms, but we are not convinced. Must do more investigating to be sure. We took yesterday off marine biology and headed for the Everglades for the day, but tomorrow we will be back at it as we head to Martin County to bathtub beach to check out the unique worm reefs there.

Until then, happy worm hunting!

That’s what Superboy and JBug are this week as they work on their projects on sea beans.

And while Superboy is busy sorting his finds I’ll tell you about the marvelous time we had collecting the beans!

We spent an entire day hitting beach after beach collecting every type of sea bean we could get our hands on, from Key Largo as far south as Bahia Honda!!

The day was perfect, cool and breezy, and the view was lovely out there …

but we were looking the other way…

hunting through the wrack line for beans of all sorts.

We found quite a few sea beans  (which I will let Superboy show you when he is done counting, sorting, and identifying them) but also lots of other neat things:

young ibis, wading

tiny beetle

black mangrove bean sprouting (these were everywhere. Superboy simply lists them in his samples as “too numerous to count”.)

crab molt, who unwittingly became the star of a brief impromptu puppet show by yours truly…

and perhaps the neatest thing of all, just in time for Halloween…

Valonia algae, also known as…

sailor’s eyeball! So cool!

and we are off to another beach, another bean to discover!

FYI: I finally got weekly plans for week 12: Bryozoans and the Continental Shelves up. You’ll find the link on the weekly plans page. Enjoy!