Earthworms: What Nature Can Teach Us

Earthworms are fascinating creatures for children. My son is always looking for earthworms and I’m always looking for ways we can learn from them. Everything in nature can teach us something, and earthworms are no exception. This month we are going to talk about how to look at earthworms and what we can learn from and about them.

Ela Wild’s “What Nature Can Teach Us”: Earthworms

I love doing earthworm activities with my son and I haven’t met a kit his age that didn’t love them. There are so many fun activities to do featuring earthworms. Make sure to read to the end to see all the fun!

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However first, I want to tell you a story.

My son was playing in the back of our yard. He kept flipping over rocks and saying “Wow!” So, I went over to see what he was doing. Turns out, he was finding a bunch of earthworms under the rocks! There were 5-6 earthworms under every rock and he was fascinated with them. I decided to join in the fun and together, we watched how they moved as they made their way back to a wet, dark area of the yard once uncovered. I pointed out how they don’t have lets like us to move which turned into a full discussion about how worms move.

How Earthworms Move

Earthworms move by elongating and then contracting muscles segments. How do you explain that to a toddler? It starts by letting them watch. Watch how the earthworms seem to get longer and then shorter as they move across the dirt. Get real close and watch the ripples down their body as they elongate and then contract the muscles segments that make up their body.

Then, show how you stretch really tall and reach to the sky, then you can come down and get shorter again. As they follow along you can explain that earthworms do this to move. Pretending to be an earthworm is a great, fun way to learn about a different way to move. Encourage them to try on the ground to really experience it.

The story continues…

After that, my son was hooked on earthworms. He loves looking for them by digging in the dirt and watching them every chance he gets. After a couple of days of rain, we went out to the yard. It was a nice, sunny day and we needed to stretch our legs! On the concrete, there were a lot of dried out earthworms. My son was very curious about them and asked what these “sticks” were. I explained how they were the same earthworms that we found under the rocks. He seemed confused but accepted that they were earthworms.

My son led me back to his favorite earthworm spot and found a bunch hanging out under the rocks. I asked him if the dirt under the rocks felt wet or dry?

“WET!”

Then, I took him back to the earthworm on the concrete and had him touch the concrete and tell me what he felt.

“It’s hard.”

Disclaimer: I’ve gotten some hilarious answers when asking a toddler an open-ended question. If you want a specific answer, give 2 choices.

Let me try that again…

“Is the sidewalk wet or dry?”

This question led to a great discussion about opposites that included us running around the yard finding different things that were wet and different things that were dry. Once he seemed to lose interest in that, we started finding other opposites in the yard.

Dark and Light
Hard and Soft
High and Low
etc.

It was a great time and it was all started by observing earthworms!

Once it was time, I enticed him to go inside by suggesting we go draw some earthworms. This provided the perfect transition to an indoor activity as it didn’t require a complete change in focus since we are still thinking (and talking) about earthworms!

#ElaWildChallenge

During the month of October, learn about earthworms. Let them show you something new. Try one of my 10 earthworm activities below and don’t forget to post a picture on Instagram using the hashtag #ElaWildChallenge so I can see what you’ve done! I’m so excited to see you explore, observe, wiggle, create earthworm art, and learn in the process!

Some more earthworm activities to try:

1) Talk about the environment that wet dirt provides for earthworms. Worms breathe through their skin and need to stay moist. Imagine a really, really dry throat. Dryness makes it harder to breathe and even earthworms need to breathe!

2) Talk about size by finding the biggest and the smallest earthworm you can find and compare two earthworms to each other by asking if one is bigger or smaller than the other. You can also make a game by cutting strands of brown yarn into different “earthworms” and sort them by size.

3) Count how many you find on a wet day and compare it to how many we see on a drier day.

4) Simply observe the worms and follow their natural curiosity. After all, child-led exploration is often the best!

5) Cut small strands of brown yarn into play earthworms that you can drag along the floor.

6) Get a magnifying glass and take a closer look.

7) Do some art! Color some coloring pages. Dip a cooked spaghetti strand, or strands of yarn into brown paint and wiggle it across a piece of paper to make “worm tacks”.

8) Have a fun earthworm snack by crushing cookies in a clear cup for “dirt” and adding a couple of gummy worms!

9) Get worm books to read.

“Wiggle and Waggle”

“Wiggling Worms at Work”

“An Earthworm’s Life”

“Worm Weather”

 

10) Do some earthworm-y music and movement play with Walter the Waltzing Worm.

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