Week Six with Extension by Alison Layton

Me looking under leaves to count the bugs on a squash plant.

Monday started in the field at the Lower Eastern Shore Research and Education Center(LESREC). Most of the squash was ready to harvest the first batch. There wasn't a lot, but we harvested about 32 in total. After we harvested, we weighed them to see how much squash we had by weight per treatment in each rep. Then we sprayed insecticide treatments on the plants. We spent the rest of the morning weeding the field. Once we got back to the office, I input all the data from last week's bug count and this week's harvest.

Me spraying the insecticidal soap treatment on the squash.

The steps I took to develop an activity for kids about pollination.

On Thursday, Emily gave me a project to make an activity for a kid's event at the library in two weeks. The topic of this event is "All together now." I came up with a list of possible ideas, and after pitching them to Emily, we picked the one the kids are most likely to enjoy. I drew a mock-up of how I wanted this to look, and when I liked that, I made a printable version. Emily and I then had a conversation about what we liked and what could be improved from this version. I updated the mock-up to make the changes we talked about. While doing this, I had ideas on how the activity might be more educational along with being fun. I did more research on the topic and changed it again to make the final version.

Making this activity was a project that allowed me to use my problem-solving skills. The strategy I used to develop this activity was trial and error. I had an idea and immediately made it. I then thought about what worked and what didn't, as well as got feedback from my mentor, who is more knowledgeable on the topic. I kept making changes until I liked the final project. This shows one element essential to critical thinking and problem solving, which is having an open mind. My final project was completely different from my original idea. It's natural to get defensive about your ideas, so it's essential to try and think about things from many different angles and listen to others' thoughts and ideas.

On Friday, Emily and I met early to go out to LESREC. We started in the field doing bug counts. I got better at identifying the bugs we were studying and learned how to identify new bugs. This study has allowed me to learn more in-depth on an issue I had only seen wide scale. Growing up on a farm, I have always known bugs were a problem and could harm the plants, but now I get to see which bugs are good and which are harmful and how they work in the system of the plant.