Halloween Candy Overload

Two of my three kids went trick-or-treating for Halloween this year (the little one was sick). Now we are facing a mountain of candy, despite my best efforts.

I took the leftover candy that we had been passing out and put it out on the step after our neighborhood had settled down for the night. What do you know? Magically, some little gremlins spirited away our candy!

As for the kids' stash, my husband and I graciously ate every little bar that may have ever come into contact with a peanut. With a child with a severe peanut allergy, it's the least that we could do. (Actual peanut-containing foods are banned from our house. Our neighbor happily traded our kids' peanut-laden treats for fruity candy.)

Yet, despite this, and even after a family-wide pig-out, we still have a mound of candy left. What should we do with the leftovers? If you're facing a similar dilemma, here are some suggestions:

• Donate your candy to the troops.

MoverMoms is organizing a candy collection in the greater Washington D.C. area. You can also mail your candy directly to Treats for Troops, based in Florida. The Treats for Troops website states that they collect left-over individually wrapped Halloween candy to use as filler in care packages for our military men and women overseas. On their website, they write, "Candy tastes better than packing 'peanuts' and is environmentally friendlier." I couldn't agree more!

• Use candy on cookies and gingerbread houses.

The holidays are just around the corner and you know what that means - holiday baking! This year, try baking some Halloween candy cookies. Small candies work great for decorations on a gingerbread house; blocks of chocolate make good beams, logs and posts. You can even use gingerbread houses to teach kids about science!

• Reuse your wrappers.

Terracycle® collects and reuses individual candy wrappers, large candy bags, and multi-pack candy bags from Mars®, Wrigley®, and Cadbury® through their Candy Wrapper Brigade® program. Look for this program at schools and businesses in your area or start a group of your own!

• Conduct Candy Experiments™.

I first encountered this fun group at last year's USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo. Did you know that you can create a density rainbow using Skittles? Float the letter "m" off of your M&Ms? Make Life Savers flash in the dark? Neither did I! (And be sure to mark your calendar - the 2nd USA Science & Engineering Festival is planned for April 28-29, 2012.)

• Spread the joy - share your candy!
  

My friends at Celebrate Green!® have even more ideas for re-purposing your candy, including taking your candy to work, nursing homes, and fire stations.


Do you have a creative use for leftover Halloween candy? Share your idea in the comments!

Photo credit: normanack, via flickr (cropped from the original) // CC BY 2.0

Outdoors & Oceans in October Contest

Dhana, an environmentally-friendly clothing line, is hosting a fall contest for kids ages 5 to 12. To enter, kids create artwork celebrating the theme of "Outdoors and Oceans in October"; parents post a photo of their child's art to Dhana's Facebook page. Contest entries should be created using pastels, oil, water color, crayons or mixed media (which includes just about everything other art supply that you can think of!).

The deadline for entries was just extended to Monday, October 17th, so you know what that means -- your odds are good for winning a prize! You could win a T-shirt from Dhana, a bag of treats & toys from my friends at Green Halloween®, or a mystery prize.

Good luck!

Where we live, October always includes a visit to a local farm.

Freebies for Science Teachers

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) has put together Freebies for Science Teachers, a list of links to online reference material and other goodies like these:

• Surf your way over to Evolution Rocks, a musical ode to Darwin from the band Overman.

• Explore the Antarctic with Tawani International Antarctic Expeditions.

• Meet The Perfect Corpse, courtesy of NOVA.

According to the NSTA website, the National Science Teachers Association "is the largest organization in the world committed to promoting excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all."

If you are a second or third year secondary science teacher in the United States, now is the time to apply for NSTA's New Science Teacher Academy, a program providing free professional development and mentoring. Two hundred teachers will be accepted as new Fellows for the 2011 Academy. The application deadline is August 1, 2011. Good luck!


Photo credit: Wm Chamberlain, via flickr // CC BY 2.0

Get Ready for National Trails Day®!

June 4 is American Hiking Society's National Trails Day® here in the United States. Search for an event near you and make plans to take a hike or explore a trail! This year's theme is "Made With All Natural Ingredients." This year marks the 19th annual celebration of the event.

Kids 12 and under are invited to participate in a coloring contest sponsored by the American Hiking Society. Winners will receive a prize pack. The deadline for entry is August 1, 2011. Good luck!

Learning from the fire ant

I saw this great article yesterday with wonderful visuals about fire ants working together cooperatively to avoid drowning - they link together and form living rafts that are remarkably hydrophobic. Engineers are looking to the ants for new ideas in waterproof materials. It was too fascinating not to share with you!

An Analysis of John McPhee's The Pine Barrens (Part 3 of 4)

[Note: I recently took an environmental literature class. As part of the coursework, I had to read two books that have influenced the American environmental movement and prepare a report on each. One of the books that I chose was John McPhee's The Pine Barrens.]

Who is John McPhee? A Hard-Working Journalist and Teacher

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1931. Following his education at Princeton and Cambridge Universities, he started to write magazine articles, first with Time magazine and later with The New Yorker. He’s been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1965. McPhee has also worked extensively as a nonfiction writing instructor. As recently as 2009, McPhee was still teaching at Princeton University.

The Pine Barrens, published in 1968, was one of McPhee’s earlier books. Personally, I thought he rambled in places and could have used more editing. While my husband assures me that this is simply McPhee’s style, I am interested in reading McPhee’s later works to see if he tightened up his writing over the years.

Part of Itinerant Cryptographer's John McPhee collection

To date, John McPhee has published 30 books on wide-ranging topics that tend to examine the intersection of humans, history, and ecology. John McPhee won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for his essays on geology which he threaded into a book called Annals of the Former World.

McPhee’s tremendous output of work coupled with an ability to take complex ideas and break them down into enjoyable prose are surely his greatest gifts as a writer. He has been called the most gifted non-fiction writer working today and he is certainly one of the hardest working. At the age of 80, he doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.

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If you like this post, be sure to read:

Part 1: Background: What are the Pine Barrens?
Part 2: What Makes the Pine Barrens So Special?
Part 4: What Type of Writer is McPhee? Why Was His Book Effective?

An Analysis of John McPhee's The Pine Barrens (Part 2 of 4)

[Note: I recently took an environmental literature class. As part of the coursework, I had to read two books that have influenced the American environmental movement and prepare a report on each. One of the books that I chose was John McPhee's The Pine Barrens.]

An area of New Jersey's Pinelands that was recently
affected by a forest fire.
Photo credit: Matt Swern, via flickr // CC BY 2.0

What Makes the Pine Barrens So Special?

The sheer size of unbroken forest in the Pinelands is unparalleled along the eastern seaboard. The region is underlain by a massive aquifer. John McPhee wrote of the groundwater:

“The water of the Pine Barrens is soft and pure, and there is so much of it that, like the forest above it, it is an incongruity in time and place.”

The sandy soils of the Pinelands, while great for purifying groundwater, make for lousy farmland. Early U.S. pioneers generally avoided the Pinelands unless they were hiding from someone or something. Their ancestors living in the region have retained that reticent, self-reliant nature. Despite some past development for iron smelting and charcoal production, the Pinelands are markedly absent of industry. Folks that lived there when McPhee was writing his book, in the late 1960’s, tended to be self-reliant. Most were not wealthy in material possessions but enjoyed their solitude, making a living by collecting and selling moss and pinecones or tending blueberry bushes and cranberry bogs.

The ecology of the pine barrens relies upon fire. Some of the pine species in the barrens won’t reproduce without fire – they need the heat to open their pine cones and release the seeds. McPhee describes this process in Chapter 7:

“It is because of fire that pines are predominant in the Pine Barrens. There is thought to be a progression in development of any forest from pioneer species to climax trees. Most ecologists agree that if fire were kept out of the Pine Barrens altogether, the woods would be eventually dominated by a climax of black oaks, white oaks, chestnut oaks, scarlet oaks, and a lesser proportion of hickories and red maples. In some areas, oaks dominate now. Fire, however, has generally stopped the march of natural progression, and the resulting situation is one that might be called biological inertia – apparently endless cycles of fire and sprouting.”

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If you like this post, be sure to read:

Part 1: Background: What are the Pine Barrens?
Part 3: Who is John McPhee? A Hard-Working Journalist and Teacher
Part 4: What Type of Writer is McPhee? Why Was His Book Effective?