4 Hour Class - Playground Detectives 2: WORMS!

After many days of rain we began to notice that alot of worms had made their way onto the playground floor. Our curiosity was piqued!

In order to bring this discovery into the classroom the teachers brought in bins of soil to play with.

After some digging around we found some real, live worms in the bins!

That was when the questions began.

What do worms eat? How do worms see? Can a worm live when it has been cut in half?

We took a book out of the library to find some answers.

Here are some of the things that we learned about worms:

they don't have eyes
they can grow a new head or tail, but will not survive being cut in half
they eat leaves, grass, dead trees (and roots), and food scraps
they do not like the sun and will die if they are exposed for more than an hour or two
their poop is ok to touch
there are no "girl" worms or "boy" worms - all worms are both!
the reason that worms squirm around in your hand is because they like all parts of their bodies to be touched at the same time.

We also did some worm-inspired art!

Worms in dirt

Worms digging tunnels

Then we did a worm search!

This involved guessing where we might find worms that had come out of the wet ground and onto the pavement or playground floor. So we made a list of some of the playgrounds we know and guessed if we would be able to find worms there. Here are the results:

We chose 3 parks: West, Climbing Spider, and Mushroom and headed out to see if we were right!

Much to our surprise, we discovered that the only park that had worms was our own!

Except for one dead worm that we found at Climbing Spider Park

Here are the results of our search:

One of the other preschool classes heard about our adventures and asked if we would come and share with them. We gladly accepted the invitation and brought our bins of dirt and our newly aquired knowledge and joined them at circle time one day. We told them the facts that we learned and invited them to dig in the bins with us.

Then we all went out to the playground and released the worms outside.

At the playground we made an interesting discovery

We crowded around to take a look at...

...REAL LIVE WORM POOP!!!

In the weeks following our worm exploration, we are still eager to find and quick to point out worms!

This one was at Burkeville Park.

Keep your eyes open you just might see some worms (or worm poop) too!

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