Monarchs headed north, milkweed planted and AP Bio tomorrow

Today in Selected Topics in Science, we finished our study of invertebrate animals.  Students spent some time learning about the major phyla of invertebrates.  It is hard to care about the environment unless you know a little about the organisms that live there.  We concentrated on invertebrates found in Kentucky and Allen County.  We also began reading a book in class by Kentucky author Jesse Steward.  Friday I am doing a demo on beekeeping which has a connection to our invertebrate study and the book we are reading.

In AP Biology, we will have all the students in class for the first time in three weeks ... lots of field trips and other distractions.  It is not easy to pass an AP exam in you miss a lot of class time.  We will check our lab (Artificial Selection) which we started on Tuesday and we working on angiosperms / plant hormones.

Yesterday, we had a meeting during our planning period and PD after school today so I was late getting home.

We have started the 2014 Patriot Pollinator project ... several flats of milkweeds planted ... common, butterfly weed, whorled, swamp and spider varieties.  The seed had been in the refrigerator for over 30 days ... hoping to get a better germination rate this year.  Monarchs are on their way north from Mexico ... hoping for a great Monarch year!

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/News.html