🖤Andrea’s Adventures🖤 Weekly Blog #6

 🖤Andrea’s Adventures🖤

Start Date: June 29- July 8

This following the campus residency - I was able to help with the UMD Insect Zoo at a Pollinator

event in Howard county! It was fun to teach kids about the different insects that belong to the

collection- and at the center where the event was held- they had some sample insect collection boxes.

I was in charge of the roaches, spiders and handing out stickers to the kids. The most common reaction

I got was kids saying “ eww what’s that?” I was able to explain a little bit more about Stella the Rose

Haired Tarantula and how old she is. Some kids were fascinated, but still didn’t want to hold her. I got

two kids to hold her during the event and one girl said she wants to get a tarantula as a pet- so I’m

happy that one less person will fear spiders! 

During this week I was able to do some more planning for the insect pinning event. I got the flier

for the event ready for distribution as well as working on a mini insect pinning handbook that I

wanted to create for kids and 4-H coordinators to distribute to their students. I organized the handbook

to give students a small introduction of insect anatomy, taxonomy and then I explained

based on the type of insect collected- how you would preserve it. I also wanted to link other Land

grant institutions that have entomology programs to inform students of places where they could study! 

Soil Health is a topic that was prevalent within these weeks of the internship and I think about the

farm visits that I was able to do with my mentors. Across central Maryland the soil make up varies

from county to county. When I went crop scouting with my mentor Mark- he explained to me the soil

health of Frederick county. We went to some farms up by Thurmont, MD and we observed some wheat

and corn fields. This internship has opened my eyes to how important soil and soil health is. I wish

when I was in elementary to high school- there were more programs to teach students about soil

health and the soil triangle! 

Here I am crop scouting in Montgomery County- seconds before I tried to catch a dragon fly, but it got away and I ended up breaking my net. 

Here is a field of corn from northern Maryland that we went to go and crop scout in.

Here I got to help at the Insect Zoo event in Howard County and I was in charge of handling the cockroaches, spiders and tarantula.