2018 Trinity High School and Mercy Academy Costa Rica Science Research Trip

Students spent the last few days digging up and relocating leaf cutter ant gardens. Here is Tyler Haddow describing his fungus garden.

Today is science all day for our students. They are working in their workbooks and establishing their and colonies in the lab. A major experiment today is the culturing of escovopsis from their individual fungus gardens. Students don't just follow procedures, they develop their own hypothesis and test the different regions of their gardens. Escovopsis is a microfungus that attacks and eats the ant colonies food source. By testing for the presence of this invader, students can then better locate colony antibiotics. All this lab work will help students develop their own research projects (which they come up with today and presentetonight). Once the groups present their research, other students will have an opportunity to peer review their ideas and help refine the experiment and data collection. Gavin's Experience With Collecting the Fungus Garden Meet Brianna from Mercy Academy.  More to come... keep watching!  By: Mr. Heintz

Mercy and Trinity students have had a blast hanging out and conducting reserach with LexCath kids. Check out their blog at: LexCath Blog

Today we woke up in the RAINforest! We experienced a lot of different sounds for many different animals, including birds, moneys, and bugs. I (Maddie) even tried to catch a gecko that came into our room. Today started with are field research and first digging of an ant colony. we got to see many different species of ants and got to dig up our own fungus gardens, which might not sound like fun, but it was a blast to see what we are going to be researching down the road. Later on in the day we made our dreams come true: zipling through the jungle. It was a lot of fun to have free time, outside of the farm and hang out with new people. I (Erika) Caelan is gathering her fungus garden  Erika preparing for the zipling Maddie is happy to go ziplinging through the jungle Pre-zipling pic "Teaching Moment" Starting the Science Looking for the colonies and how to get them out The big ol' queen Classic pre-adventure group photo faced my f...

On this lovely day in Costa Rica ,we started our science reaserch. In the early morning birds were singing and woke all of us up. After our breakfast of eggs and fruit we took a tour on the chocolate farm. We got to try a cocoa drink with carillio cacoa with sugar and vanilla. There were also many other kinds of cocao treats. We learned about carillio and how the different qualities of chocolate are measured. Most industrial chocolate is more bitter and has more sugers and milk added. Every one we tried was great while also being healthy. Today we also go to take our first real trip into the rainforest. we took alot of great pictures. We were split in groups today and got to practice using the scientific  methoid. We got to grow bacteria in agar in petri dishes. Later in the afternoon we watch two short films about the leafcutter  ant and how they live, this wasa preview of the problem that we are going to be able to choose to study and solve. Trek through the rainforest ...

Mrs. Bowman has been teaching science for 28 years, and hs been at Mercy Academy since 2001. This is Mrs. Bowman's first time visiting Finca La Anita, but not her first science trip with students. 

Thanks to Daniel Carper for bringing his drone to Costa Rica. This is an aerial flight of the farm where we eat, sleep and do science. https://youtu.be/iMO36dNDtVM