Worms, Worms, Worms.....

Worms, worms, worms........... Today was all about worms. Last night, our evening crew of children were helping me move some the sand near the edges of our sandbox because we need to enlarge it by a few feet for our new play structure. (We received a quality improvement grant from the 4Cs/Great Start Regional Resource Center for a new outdoor play structure. I'll be blogging more about this as we finish installing it.) When we went to move the edges of the sandbox, we found a bunch of worms!!

"Can we keep them?"

"Find a bucket and we will bring them inside."

This morning, I filled the sensory table with some dirt and our worms:

"They are wiggly"

It tickles when they move on your hand.

They look much bigger when you use a magnifying glass!

"Look at how long that one is!!!!"

"I think this one is the longest worm."

After we spent some time observing our new worm friends, we decided it was time to paint with "worms." Our worms were made from pieces of a new mop head. We dipped them in paint and wiggled and jiggled them across the page... Just like the real worms wiggled in our sensory table.

"Look, this worm made an A!"

Although all of the children enjoyed making the worm paintings, the youngest two were the most intrigued. They spent quite some time working on their masterpieces!

Dane decided that the worms needed a real home that wasn't the sensory table, and we decided to follow these instructions from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. However, we decided to use a larger container for our farm.

We alternated layers of soil, uncooked oatmeal and sand until our container was nearly filled to the top. Then we added some water before we placed the worms on the top.

We learned that worms are nocturnal which means that they like to stay up at night and aren't very active during the day. We also learned that worms are good for the soil. We weren't quite sure what was going to happen to the worms in our farm, but we put it in a bag to help keep it dark and will check on our worms every day.

By the time we finished with all of this fun stuff, it was time for lunch.... and we, of course... ate worms:

Okay, they weren't really worms. They were turkey dogs that were cut into long sliver pieces before they were boiled, but Ms. Amy sure fooled us for a couple of minutes!

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Ashley Pichea said…

Worms are so much fun! Unless they're hornworms (like the ones I found last week) and they're eating your tomato plants! :)

Stopping by to say "Hi" from the Hip Homeschool Hop!
I just wanted to introduce myself as the newest member of the HHM team - I'm looking forward to getting to know you!

- Ashley Pichea
@apichea
ashleypichea.com

September 14, 2010 at 5:32 PM

Brimful Curiosities said…

My daughter loves to hold worms...my son won't touch them.

September 20, 2010 at 12:17 AM

Ticia said…

I love all you did. And they made such great observations.

September 30, 2010 at 11:02 PM

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