What a morning!

Mrs Kerslake’s grade 3 class (Helen’s class) decided to setup a worm composter in their class room this spring.  I went in last week and supplied them with the worms to get started.

This was not a simple handover of worms however … we sorted worms from the finished compost of our bin, split the worms we found and setup their composter.  The kids split up into groups of 4-5 and sorted through piles of compost for the worms.  A few of the kids were unimpressed initially; worms are … worms after all, and they do live in dirt.  By the end of the morning most of the kids were enthusiastically digging for worms, and hunting for cocoons.  A lot of them even ditched their gloves!  We also shredded newspaper for their worm bin.  I brought in our little electric paper shredder to make things go faster, and had no idea how popular this activity would be. It was a noisy class room!

Kids being kids they came up with a bunch of questions I did not know the answer to.  How long have worms been around?  (A long time!)  What species are they? (Well … they are not mammals.)  What is the ring around the middle of the worm?  (I actually knew this one, but could not remember the name.)

By the time I left the class had its composter setup and Mrs. Kerslake was trying to convince the kids that they had to eat their fruit and vegetables instead of giving it straight to the worms!

Thanks for the fun morning guys!