Make a Worm Observation Jar

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Spring has finally arrived in Texas!  I sincerely feel for any of you who are still experiencing snow and cold weather – this winter was pretty brutal!  Spring always feels like a great time to get outside and dig in the dirt.  We decided to celebrate the beginning of spring with some lovely… worms!

It’s fun to make a worm observation jar as a way to see what worms do for the earth.  We chose a plastic jar from what we had around the house and filled it with layers of dirt and sand.  By layering dirt and sand, you can easily see how the worms tunnel into the ground to mix the soil and make spaces for roots to grow.

We read a book about worms – Yucky Worms: Read and Wonder by Vivian French.

Then we got to work!

I didn’t really want the boys to dig up worms out of our own yard (the yard needs them!) so we bought a package of night crawlers in the bait section at Walmart.  The boys LOVED them.

We chose a few worms to put in the top of our observation jar.  In between our layers, we also added some leaves to add more food for the worms as the leaves decompose.

We covered the outside of the jar with black paper so that the worms would be more likely to make their tunnels at the edge where we could see them – and it worked!

After the worms sat for a day or so (the boys were dying to look!), we took off the paper and checked out the jar!

Hello, worm!

I didn’t get another picture, but now (almost 2 weeks later), the worms have visibly mixed up the dirt and sand.  We added a little water along the way to make sure to keep them moist, and we’ll release them in our yard as soon as we’re done with them.

Another fun spring project is to plant a garden in a plastic tub.  We did this last year, and it made a great place for the boys to play with toy animals and Lego minifigures.