All About Worms!!

Since so many teachers posting their worm experiences I have been inspired by them and wanted to try something new and do a unit on worms! Since this week I was already teaching the letter W it was the perfect time.  When I told the class that we were exploring worms for the letter W they were not very excited!

So excited to learn about worms!

                                               
                     Can’t you see the excitement?  Wow! 

                                             

              When I pulled out the worms some didn't know if they wanted to touch them or not.

                                               
                                                        

                                                                 Our worms

                                          

                                                     

Some did get up enough courage to touch one.  Once one went it was like a chain reaction, everyone wanted to touch them.  I asked them what knew about worms and I wrote it on the board. It was the basic stuff they lived underground, birds ate them.  I let them look at the worms and tell me what they looked like and felt like.  I read a few books to them about worms.  The Diary of A Worm was their favorite.  

                                                       

It was all because of one sentence the worm said.  "I told my sister that no matter how long she looks in the mirror her butt is always going to look like her face."  Of all things!!! Well I guess to 4 year olds that was the funniest thing they had ever heard.  It is a cute book and we did pick up a few more facts.

I had some worm words that we talked about and they wrote (traced) in their worm books we made.  We did an experiment with a wet paper towel and a dry paper towel.  We graphed how many worms moved to the wet paper towel and how many stayed on the dry towel.  

                                              

I had bought some gummy worms and had the kids touch and look for what is the same and what is different between the two.
I had found a cute project on Pinterest taking brown construction paper for the dirt and a strip of green paper for the grass and a shape of a worm out of cardstock paper. I cut long slits in the brown paper for the worm to weave in and out of the dirt.   (I forgot to take a picture of it).

After our project we made a worm hotel for all our little worms.  We layered the soil and sand so we could see the worms making tunnels through layers.  The kids enjoyed putting that together.  On Monday we are hoping to see lots of tunnels!

At the end of the day I played a game called "Show Me Your Thumbs" this is actually a quick and very easy assessment I like to do to see how much the cuties learned and knew.  I ask the class questions true/false, yes no questions, multiple choice questions and they respond with putting a thumbs up or thumbs down according to what they think the answer is.  Here is an example:

"Do worms live in the water?  If you think the answer is yes, thumbs up.  But if you think the answer is no, thumbs down. "   I love playing this game! I use it a lot when I teach new concepts.  It is so easy for me to scan the class and tell who has it and who needs a little extra help.

Next week Mothers Tea! Hope you all have a wonderful Easter.