When the kids arrived on W w worm day they found worms on a window for some above and below viewing. I propped the window up on two teacher chairs and stayed close to hold it steady. the kids crawled under to watch the wiggly worms and watched from above to see their funny friend (and worms) through the window. Lou pulled up a chair before class to get a good view. First, we talked about the letter Ww and the sound it makes. We sang the phonics song. We added W pictures to our W page in our class alphabet book. Then to practice our letter, I put the friends in small groups of three and sent them with one of the stretchy bands and had them see if they could work together to make a W. Only one group figured it out. They demonstrated for the others when we came back to the rug. This picture is obviously a work in progress group. To get the worm part of our day started, we read An Earthworms Life by John Himmelman. It has nice drawings and good worms facts. I added in a few more worm facts from other books I had looked at. I used this posted I drew to help point out the facts from the book as well as to review the facts after we read. There are even worm castings (poop) which was pretty funny to the boys. Here are a few other books I had on hand, but didn't get to. Sometimes the day just gets away from us. That usually means we have been having a good day. I showed the kiddos these pictures, which I just found through a google image search. We talked about whether the pictures were fake or real. They are both real pictures of giant earthworms from Australia. Aren't they crazy! Next, each friend was given a worm on a paper plate and an observation page and sent somewhere in the room to observe their worm. Before passing these material out, we discussed what it meant to observe, using our senses, and how we were being like scientist. We also talked about proper handling of the worm. God made worms too, so we should be gentle with them; the kids all agreed and no one lost their worm, although one did crawl off the plate and try to make a break for it. The worm observation pages were later collected into a class book. When we came back to the rug, supplies were collected by our lovely parent helper and we shared some observations we made about our worms. I asked the kids to complete the sentence, "My worm..." Some talked about how the worm looked, others about how it felt, some about what it did, and one commented about how it smelled. Later, I wrote their sentence on the bottom of their observation page. They made some good observations. Then, I asked if any of them had tasted the worms. They seemed grossed out, of course they had not. So I tricked them! I acted like I was trying to make sure I had the right worms and was worried about how long they had been in a closed container. I explained that I had some worms that I had rinsed the dirt off of (who would eat dirt!). I showed them the bowl of worms and then I picked one up and wiggled it. Then I ate it. They were pretty grossed out! I used this recipe for the worms. I offered others a chance to taste and a few started to figure it out. I had two worms for each friend in a small individual bowl, but my leader child for the day had also brought jello worms so we just ate out of their container. There were a few friends who had the worm in their mouths before they figured it out. At some point, we let them crawl through a tunnel like a worm. The craft for the day was painting with worms. They were rubber fishing worms in brown paint. Some friends were really into this and painted most of the 35ish minutes we were in our enrichment room. Here is my Lou's art. I snuck this activity in at the very end of the day. I gave them each a few short gummy worms and told them a letter I wanted them to make. When they had made a few letters, I gave them a regular long gummy worm to nibble on. The kids are really good at working with some food/candy item without eating it, knowing they will get a clean treat to eat later. We sang this song in the hallway while we waited for all of the friends to get through the bathroom. I'd printed it out a few years ago and had it in a folder. I don't know where it came from. Each line gets repeated, echo style" The silliest worm I ever saw was stuck inside my soda straw. He said to me don't take a sip for if you do, you're sure to flip. I took a sip, and he went down down through my pipes. He was my friend but he is gone. Now he lives inside my tummy. The kids were troopers this day and we just kept getting through things and they were eager to keep working. I love those days. I was worried we wouldn't get to these worms. With all the cutting I did, that would have been disappointing. I passed out the worms and sang the worm song below. I got this idea from a similar song I saw in a Mailbox magazine. It might not have been about worms, I don't remember. To the tune of "Where is Thumpkin" Where is Victor worm? Where is Victor worm? (child with V worm brings it up) Here he is. Here he is. What do you say Victor? What do you say Victor? (Kids:) /v/ /v/ /v/, /v/ /v/ /v/. Then we repeated with other names I assigned to each worm. I used the yellow cards to show the letter I was looking for. I wanted everyone to be successful with identifying their letter. I wrote the name on the back for me. We took a bunch of the worms home and Lou and Bee made them up some compost habitats. Next year, I might have the kids in class each make one and take a worm home. Here was snack. Aren't these crazy? Whale cupcakes! They are icing covered Twinkies coming out of cupcakes. Here are a few other worm activities that my super co-teacher did the day prior. She passed out a long (brown/pinkish) dyed sock to each child. They put it on their arm and pretended they were worms. They she sang this song and walked around the circle pretending to be a bird. The kids wiggled their arms. She snatched up a worm at the end of each song. The kids loved it. She's so good at doing fun things like this. They also did some worm weaving, which the kids liked as well. The soil is just laminated brown construction paper that has slits cut in it. The worms must be about 10-11 inches long. There were bunches of worms available. Some kids wove 6 or more. They also pretended some rope pieces were worms. They wiggled them on the floor and in the air, etc. Then they made some worm rope letters on the floor. I guess this picture must be rotated, I thought it was supposed to be a 'b'. The kids are starting to think that since we are getting to the end of the alphabet, we must be getting to the end of the year. Lou agrees. He is counting down already.