Published: May 12, 2008 10:50 pm            

Students learn the importance of worms

The pupils in Angie Biscella’s first-grade class at Washington Elementary reacted with a chorus of disgusted “Ewwwws” when Anne Short lifted a worm from its plastic cup.

But by the time Short finished her presentation about composting, the children had a new respect for the job of the lowly earthworm.

Short, a Kokomo native and solid waste program specialist for Amador County Waste Management in Jackson, Calif., helped the first-graders in Biscella and Jenny Quillen’s classes start their own compost box, filled with wet newspaper, scraps of corn husk and other food waste, and worms, as part of a lesson on composting and recycling.

She asked the children what they throw away every day, and they listed items such as food, paper, grass clippings, soda cans and plastic bottles. Short talked briefly about recycling cans and paper, and reusing items until they are worn out, and then talked about composting, which she said is “imitating nature by turning food back into soil.”

To help them do that, she introduced the worm.

“Now that’s just gross,” one pupil said, as Short lifted a plastic model of part of a worm.

“Worms are actually pretty cool,” Short said, explaining that they have no eyeballs and no teeth, but they can eat through their mouths. When the food comes out the back end, it comes out as soil, she said.

Students lined the bottom of a plastic tub with newspaper, then Short poured water on top and added a baggie of food scraps. Then it was time for the stars of the show — the worms.

One at a time, each child lifted a wriggling worm out of the soil on a plate, and dropped it into the food scraps.

The worm Keegan Paul tried to lift writhed and wriggled away from him, off the plate and onto the table.

“Hurry, put him in his new home,” Short said with a laugh.

Emily Whiteman gingerly picked up a worm by an end and dropped it into the tub with a shudder, wiping her hands on her blue sundress.

“It was scary picking them up,” she said.

Her classmate Dakota Harris disagreed.

“That was fun,” he said. “I didn’t know they make soil when they eat.”

In the hallway, Short’s mother, Sharon, who is Biscella’s teaching assistant, helped the children clean their hands before returning to the classroom.

Once the worms were in their new home, they needed some comfort. Pupils dropped more shredded newspaper on top of them, to keep them warm, and Short poured more water on top.

“You guys have just created your own worm farm,” she said.

“They don’t like to be messed with much,” she said. “Let them be, just let them get nestled in, and they will start to eat the scraps and paper. They will pretty much eat anything that used to be alive, and turn it all into soil.”

Short said compost can be harvested for use in getting rid of food scraps in a natural way. She hopes the children learned “how to reduce the amount of stuff they throw away.”

Biscella said the lesson fits in with the science curriculum, and teaches it in a way her pupils won’t forget. They’ll watch their worms for the rest of the school year, she said.

“I don’t think they’ve ever thought about worms having such an important job.”

        

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