Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Homegrown Frugal Frugivorous Fruitfest!

Twig Walkingstick lives in and around the Wooster campus of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. His alter ego is Kurt Knebusch, one of our super-talented writers and editors on campus. Each month, look for Twig to answer a reader questions and some additional interesting facts below. After Twig's post, we will be providing some ideas and suggestions on how to incorporate the info in Twig's column into fun science learning for your students and children.

Q. Dear Twig: You asked this last week: "Why would you want to grow your own fruit?" You mentioned a good way to learn about it.

A. My friend Miss McGillicuddy grows her own raspberries. She has bags and bags of frozen ones down in the freezer in her basement. Whenever she wants some, even in the middle of winter, maybe to make a raspberry cobbler, she goes downstairs and gets some. Simple. They're free, sweet and good. And in summer, whoa, during raspberry season, she picks them almost every day (she has to, there are so many) and can eat them fresh, if she wants to, till she pops. Which make, as I see it, some pretty good reasons to grow your own fruit or to try.

How to learn about it? Find gobs of helpful books at your library or bookstore. And also try this new one. It's called Midwest Home Fruit Production Guide. It's a fact-filled, fruit-filled, fruity fruitipedia. The place I work for, Ohio State, just published it. You can read about it here. You can buy it online here ($9.50). 

Fruitfully,

Twig

P.S. More good reasons: It's fun. Good exercise. And cuts your food bill with fresh, healthy food.

P.P.S. Frugal ("FROO-guhl") means thrifty, inexpensive, economical. Frugivorous ("froo-JIV-ah-russ") means fruit-eating.

Notes:
Another good way to learn more: Find a ton of fact sheets on fruit growing at Ohioline. Click the yellow "Yard and Garden" circle. Click the third bullet down: "Fruit." Then pick a fruit and start fruitin'! Learnin'! Both!

Remember, the kinds of fruit you can grow in Ohio and the rest of the Midwest include apples, grapes, pears, plums, peaches, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and a big bunch of others.

Our closing words come from three bards: "A crummy commercial?" (Ralphie, "A Christmas Story"). "It's a Major Award!" (The Old Man, "A Christmas Story"). "Tell me what I want, what I really, really want!" (Ralph Wiggum, "The Simpsons").

Good night, good luck.

Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Where do deer sleep during winter?

 Twig Walkingstick lives in and around the Wooster campus of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. His alter ego is Kurt Knebusch, one of our super-talented writers and editors on campus. Each month, look for Twig to answer a reader questions and some additional interesting facts below. After Twig's post, we will be providing some ideas and suggestions on how to incorporate the info in Twig's column into fun science learning for your students and children.

Q. Dear Twig: Where do deer sleep during winter?

A. In two kinds of places. The choice depends on whether it's daytime or nighttime. (I assume here a cold, snowy winter where the deer is. Are.)

At night, deer tend to sleep near coniferous ("kuh-NIFF-er-us") trees. (Coniferous trees you know might include pines, firs, spruces and hemlocks.) A usual spot is next to a trunk under thick, low, sheltering branches. The branches serve as a roof and a blanket. They keep out the wind, slow down how fast heat gets lost and help the deer save energy. A key for a deer to survive winter is to save energy.

During the day, deer sleep more in the open, away from deep, dark woods, a lot of times on a fill facing south or west. Why: To be in the sun. The sun's heat makes them warm. Or at least not as cold.

The technical term for both places is "bed sites." Deermay "bed" —lie down, sleep, or just hunker down and relax—at times throughout the day or night.

Long winter's nappilu,

Twig

P.S. Ohio's native deer is the white-tailed deer. Out west look for mule deer. Also, mules.

Notes from Twig: 

• Mules, but not mule deer, like in Ohio too of course. And in many other places, such as "Hee Haw."
• Subspecies of the mule deer (note: not a mule) are the Sitka deer (ditto) and black-tailed deer (ditto ditto). White tailed subspecies are the Coues (said "cooze." "cows" or "coos," depending on who says it) deer and Florida key deer.
• Sources included "Winter Bed-site Selection by White-tailed Deer in Central Ontario," Journal of Wildlife Management, 1983.
• Ohio State's experts on deer and wildlife management in general, but not mules, work in the School of Environment and Natural Resources, specifically in the Terrestrial Wildlife Ecology Laboratory.

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Using this information for education:

Many students are preparing to celebrate the holiday season and dreaming of what they may find under the Christmas tree. Unlike the Christmas trees inside homes which have presents underneath them, nature's Christmas trees (pines, hemlocks and firs to name a few) are often a present to wildlife in and of themselves. 

Written by Colleen Monroe, A Wish to be a Christmas Tree is a fun holiday read that recounts the tale of a pine tree that has grown too large to ever be picked by a family as a Christmas tree. As he begins to cry, his woodland-creature-friends share how important he is to them...how he provides shelter from the storms with his branches, bedding for deer, and many other important benefits. Still sad, the tree is cheered when the animal s decorate him on their own and make him their own special Christmas tree.

This is a fun book to read during the holiday season, because it teaches the importance of friendship and helping others, but children can also learn about the important ecological functions of trees for wildlife in a fun way. And that includes providing cozy beds for deer in winter. Thanks, Twig!

Halloween is over, so what now?

Wondering what to do with those leftover Jack-O-Lanterns? Now's the perfect time to go back and look at our fun lesson on pumpkin decomposition! 'Cause what's not to love about getting a useful lesson out of something you were probably just going to throw away anyhow?

And, I recently found two really cool books to go right along with that lesson on decomposition. Both talk about the plan life cycle in fun, easy-to-understand ways. In fact, we spent last week sharing those lessons with preschoolers, who loved the stories and illustrations (not to mention they ooey, gooey, slimey disembowelment of the pumpkins)!

The first book is Pumpkin Jack, which is both written and illustrated by Will Hubbell. I especially love this book for this activity because it starts the life cycle off with the Jack-O-Lantern phase of the pumpkin and has great illustrations of the slimey, rotten phase of the pumpkin. Then the seeds start to grow in the spring and the little boy ends of with another Jack-O-Lantern. This is and especially great story to share if you have kids who are reluctant to get rid of their carving masterpieces.

I also love It's Pumpkin Time! by Zoe Hall and illustrated by Shari Halpern. I especially love the illustrations, which definitely remind me of some of my favorite Eric Carle books. This book follows the adventures of siblings who plant and care for their own pumpkins. Especially helpful are the illustrations of the life cycle at the end of the story. I copied these drawings, cut and laminated them into smaller pieces and used them in a sequencing activity...which worked really well.

Halloween may be over, but those pumpkins are still good for something!

Bringing buggy books to life

One of the things we love to do is get kids excited about all kinds of science. And one sure-fire hit with kids is bugs. Love 'em or hate 'em (and most kids are in the love category....way more than the adults), insects and their relatives are sure to get a reaction from almost anyone.

Here at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center's Wooster campus, we are blessed with a fun, fabulous and FREE Bug Zoo. If you've never been, it's a treat. All kinds of creepy-crawlies to learn about, touch and enjoy...plus some fabulously huge arthropod props mounted to the wall our Bug Zoo caretaker Miss Judy managed to track down. It's awesome.

But obviously, not everyone is blessed to have such a resource in their home or classroom (as many of you are thinking, "Thank goodness!"). So books become a great resource for teaching kids about the science of insects. Bonus? It also helps kids get excited about reading, and bug books can be really fun non-fiction books for kids to enjoy.

One service we offer is making trips to schools who are unable to visit our campus in person because of financial or distance issues, either through our OARDC on the Road program or through our Guest Reader program. We love to read! One of our favorite books to take is My Book of Bugs. What makes it fun is that the book is only one small part of our magic box:

In addition to the book, which we definitely enjoy reading with the kids, we've also scoured convenience store bargains and our insect archive collection (not to mention our native environment: the fabulous outdoors). To find examples of the insects discussed in My Book of Bugs.

For example:

Many of these much larger than life insect models (all of which are discussed in the book) can be readily found at your local dollar or convenience store/ In fact, Target has a fabulous little collection in their dollar bins this spring, including models like these, the spongy-capsules that "grow" into insects in water and some basic bug-hunting supplies. These are great, especially if you are leery of real-life insects or you have some kids that aren't sure about the whole bug thing. The key is, the kids get their cues from you, the adult. If you are freaked out by the real-life insects, they will be, too. If you act like they are cool (even if that's not what you're really thinking), the kids will, too.

We add to that some mounted species. This is excellent for kids, because in our experience kids tend to have a lot of difficulty distinguishing the difference between "real" and "dead." I like to say these bugs are "real dead." Did you think it was funny? The kids don't normally laugh either....it's OK. For example, we bring along this mounted Atlas Moth:

And finally, what really makes this a fund experience for the kids is bringing along some real-life critters. You can find some of these locally on your own, like these crickets:

They're just super-excited to be out and about on classroom visits. Each day they spend outside the Bug Zoo is one less day they have to worry about Miss Judy feeding them to the bigger buggies. Oops! I hope they didn't hear that!

And finally, we do have in our arsenal a couple of things the average parent or teacher is not going to be able to readily put their hands on:

Recognize them? Yep, these are Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches...the very same kind made famous on Fear Factor when people would lay with them or even eat them. None of that goes on during my watch.....ick.

Besides, we have other programs during the year for eating bugs.....

But we'll save the deatils of A Bug's World for another post another time...