Hey rutgers, Back in the late 90's, I worked for the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens. We applied and received federal grant money to teach about california native plants and animals to elementary students in urban, underfunded schools. Each class got to participate in 1 of 5 projects and had slide shows, etc. One of the projects was making a worm composting kit. Each kid got to "feed" the worms one week per year. We gave the teachers info on worm biology, ecology, etc for them to support the project. The program was called california alive, and it looks like its now taken off into some sort of educational program (google Cal Alive). Regarding lasagna gardening with the kids...I recommend you ask each child to bring in their compostable kitchen waste from the weekend in a plastic bag and then have them all dump their stuff at the base of the lasagna pile. Then cover it with grass clippings. Then have them tear up and shred used paper assignments, etc. Then convey to them that they are helping to keep land fills empty, not wasting fossil fuels by having their trash/waste driven to a landfill, etc. Then I suggest you consider growing something edible that they can plant (fall brocolli or lettuce), harvest, learn nutrutional benefits of, etc. Maybe you could also consider getting a class iguana or hampster or something and grow greens to feed the animal. Oh a million ideas are out there. Email me if you have further questions....g

Oh about 7 half pints. I was thinking of using instead of (or with, if you think it won't be hot enough) the Hinkelhatz I usually use in the Gold recipe. I just have to label that batch as the extra-hot version. I'm surprised that Southington farm does enough business to bother growing bhuts, though at $1/pod it doesn't take many to show a profit. I wonder how many takers they have? I sold 1 Hinkelhatz this year, a few years ago I had a young vendor boasting he could handle heat and I gave him a really small one, he cut off a piece with his jackknife and ate it, started gasping and sweating. People around here just don't know hot. DH shrugs at Hinkelhatz, I'm going to try the Aji Limon (if that's what it really is, it's Burpee seed but looks right) on him. I don't know if he could handle a straight bih but he might enjoy the jelly. I just made a batch of salsa, I usually put 1/2C of hot (serrano, jalapeno) and 1.5C of sweet peppers in a 6 pint batch, this time I put 1C of each and the jalapenos were hotter than usual, that should be enough for him but I think it's going to be too hot for me. It was very unusual this year, I had a ripe orange (?) jalapeno, even the green Jalapeno Gigantes seem extra hot, but this one almost blistered my lip when I touched it to it to see if it was a hot or sweet (my sweet orange minis are more flattened than conical though). I'm saving seed from that one ;-) As usual, I didn't wear gloves and the fingertips on my left hand are sill tingling though the lip/tongue aren't any more.

"One last thing is for the student to know why their experiment is important in the real world." One of my problems with the original hypothesis of which kitchen scraps would a worm prefer is how that makes a difference. It's not practical to separate food scraps into separate components. You might show that worms prefer watermelon rinds to beans but have you ever heard anyone complain about the amount of watermelon rinds causing problems at the landfill even after the 4th of July picnic? In this world of 'going green', I think I'd look at items that do present problems at the landfill but should not. A recycling company wants the easy to recycle stuff like newspaper, magazines, junkmail and old telephone books. Even in our city where we now have an active recycling initiative for paper and plastic we have things that are routinely sent to the landfill. A couple things come to mind. One is the papertowels from a restaurant or airport restroom. You could probably even get the information from the airport to compute the tonnage of waste paper they deal with. Another is disposable diapers -even though human waste is probably not something I would think a young child should be exposed to. And I'm not sure how well the worms can handle decomposing diapers anyway. A better choice would be lawn scraps. Particularly now that this is the time of year people will sending tons to the landfill instead of composting it themselves. You could even separate the lawn refuse into pure grass clippings vs chipped shrubbery scraps. I am aware that these will heat up and all that but you can do a week of precomposting them all after innoculating them with a measured amount of casting tea before adding the worms. The experiment would then not be a preference study but rather one of efficiency. Perhaps a mixture as another variable. After a specified time, sift the vermicompost for castings and compare with unprocessed material. You can do both bulk and weight comparisons.

Is this about a child who hasn't reached the maturity to take responsibility for his own work or is it about your dislike of standardized tests? I don't see what one has to do with the other. What should or should not have been done in first grade is irrelevent. This is not about past mistakes, it is about his current problems. Whether schools should administer standardized tests or not is irrelevent to your grandson's current academic problems. There might be very good points about such tests, but that debate is another post in itself. I don't think it has anything to do with this child's lack of focus. So focus on what the problem is now and how to go forward in the right direction for him to learn to be more successful. Notice I said "him learn to be" not make him. He needs to learn the skills himself because middle school will be a big change. Many 5th graders are very bright students but aren't ready for the demands that middle school will put on them emotionally. That is the part about self discipline, study skills, prioritizing, etc. If he has those skills, regardless of his intelligence, he should be able to do what the school/teacher is asking in the second half of the year. If he doesn't, he isn't ready for the next level, regardless of his intelligence. I agree with having two tests done for ADD, might as well make certain. But don't go into it looking for someone to affirm what you suspect, try to remain open minded and just wait and see what the tests determine. Then focus on those study and responsibility skills, not just the academics. Both are equally important to school and life success. I would work out a "contract" with my child listing on paper his responsibilities and his plan to fulfill them. If he forgets assignments, he needs to learn to use an assignment planner. If he doesn't complete assignments, he needs to work on the self discipline to finish before he goes on to something else. Whatever the problems are, he needs to be involved with coming up with the solution. He is bright, he can do that. Let him use his problem solving skills to solve his problem. The contract would include the final expectations, how to evaluate if they were met or not, and what the plan will be if they are not met. I would consider keeping him back if he is not able to get himself where he needs to be, he is not ready for 6th grade. Not as a punishment, it should not be thought of or talked of as a punishment. It is the solution to a problem. You don't want him to go into 6th grade with the same problems. Suppose (for example) the academic requirements for moving to 6th grade were to know 50 states and capitols, recognize certain countries on the world map, do long division, label the digestive tract, read on a 6th grade level, and, oh, label the levels of the Earth's atmosphere. Those skills would be required, not because it looks good on the school's performance charts, but because they are prerequisits to what will be taught in 6th grade. Students will be taught information and skills that build on what they should already know. If they don't know that information, they cannot learn what builds on it. The skills of responsibility, self discipline and study habits should be seen as prerequisits for the next level. He will not be able to achieve at the expected level in 6th grade if he does not have those skills. Therefor, he must demonostrate those skills before moving on. OK, that was the long winded answer for yes, if he doesn't prove those skills, I would agree to hold him back. I would do so not as a punishment, but because it is what needs to be done to ensure his success in middle school and later in high school.