Events

How does a Cardinal use leverage? How does a hawk’s talon exert pressure? Explore forces like friction, breaking strength, levers, pushes and pulls. Find out how physics shows up in nature!

It’s tea time at Merry Lea! Put on your favorite summer outfit and come join us for a morning tea party. Everyone will start by tasting herbal teas, select their favorite flavors and learn how to make a cup of tea with garden herbs. Next we will prepare fresh produce based finger foods. Then, adults will sit down so the children may take their order and serve them tea and refreshments. Don’t worry - everyone will have a chance to sip and nibble together at the end.

In a Pickle? It’s that time of the year where produce is beginning to roll in. Let’s make it last! Learn how to preserve crunchy, salty, vinegary veggies in jars. During this workshop we will do some taste testing and compare different methods for pickling, discuss what veggies (and flavor combinations) pickle well, and then process cucumbers to make refrigerator dill pickles to take home.

The IMN program features various nature topics for local youth to discover Indiana's outdoor world through hands-on activities, outdoor investigations, volunteering and learning from local experts across different career paths, interests and organizations.

Have you seen any monarchs this summer? They are the big orange butterflies that we see flying along the ditches and visiting flowers. They lay their eggs on milkweed and the caterpillars eat the leaves. This month, come listen to Gail Gibbon’s Monarch Butterfly book and then examine some specimens before we go looking for the different stages of monarchs around Kesling Wetland.

Use your taste buds to sample different plant-produced compounds like glucose, menthol, carotenoids, and others. Use cabbage to experiment with pH, and concoct (& taste!) your very own farm fizzy using farm fresh ingredients from the Merry Lea Teaching Farm.

Have you noticed how noisy it is getting outside?! Many insects - including grasshoppers and crickets - are old enough now to start singing! This month for Tales and Trails, we will be reading Are You a Grasshopper by Judy Allen & Tudor Humphries. After that, we will search for grasshoppers, crickets and other insects active in the late summer meadows. We might even try moving like grasshoppers and try imitating their sounds to make our own insect chorus.