Rollercoaster Mum: How to make a wormery - a kids activity for National Gardening Week

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Thursday 18 April 2013

How to make a wormery - a kids activity for National Gardening Week

National Gardening Week - Home

As promised on my post yesterday for National Gardening Week, I thought you might like to see how we made a wormery. This is not strictly gardening of course but it is about wildlife in the garden and teaching the little'uns about wildlife and the natural world around us. Worms are (after the brilliant bees of course) one of the most important creatures in a garden. They recycle the 'rubbish' like old leaves, enriching and aerating the soil at the same time, so making it a better place to grow things in.

This is a really easy project to do with the kids and it can be done inside if it's a rainy day (apart from actually finding the worms of course!) Unless you're like us and just do it outside in the rain anyway.

1/ Find an old plastic soft drinks bottle and carefully cut the top off:


2/ Find some soil and some sand (we used soil from old pots last year and sand from the sand pit that we gave away last weekend). Layer these alternately in your plastic bottle so you have distinct layers (this helps to see where the worms have been later)


3/ Then go find some worms - in your garden if you have one, or just out in the fields, woods or park (don't start digging up the flowerbeds in the park though!) This is best bit although Little Miss Sunshine wasn't too keen on holding one.

garden worms

4/ Put some leaves and grass on top of the soil in your wormery bottle (this gives the worms something fresh to eat) and add the worms on top.


5/ Finally wrap the bottle in dark coloured cardboard so that the worms are in the dark (as they are usually underground) and cover with clingfilm with a few airholes put in it as this helps to keep the humidity high and to stop the worms escaping (although this is unlikely as they will probably burrow down.)


Leave the wormery for a week, just sprinkle daily with a couple of spoonfuls of water - to keep it damp. Our soil was very wet to start with so this was less important but will be very important if you start with dry soil. After a week, take the cardboard off and admire the tunnels made by the worms. Our big reveal will be at the weekend so you'll have to come back them to see if it worked or not!

2 comments:

  1. How'd it go?!? How long did your worms live in this environment? My Daisy girl scout troop loves this idea! I just don't want to inadvertently kill any worms by keeping them in there too long. Thank you so much!

    ReplyDelete
  2. good questions Margaret. I was wondering the same

    ReplyDelete

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