Our son and his wife have asked each of their son’s grandparents to spend a little time with him each week on FaceTime during this crazy time. It works like this: Each grandparent chooses a skill or activity to teach him, and my suggestion of teaching him about nature was accepted. Whew! Glad they approved!
I have lots of ideas, but the first one which sprang to mind after seeing a photo of our grandson after a rain last week, is to make a worm farm with my little guy....not too hard to do with a little help on the other end. Our grandson will learn the importance of worms in our gardens , and if a child learns to treat worms well, they will treat other creatures carefully and gently. Sounds win-win to me!
I am not going to tell you in detail how to make this worm farm - there are a million different ways on the internet - but basically you fill a transparent (glass) container with slightly moist soil, add food scraps then put in some earthworms from the garden. The container will need to be partially dark, so cover the sides with newspaper which can be removed to check the tunnels the worms will make along the inside of the container. Make sure there are holes in the top so the worms can breath, and voila, a worm farm! Just add scraps as necessary!
Earthworms are important for many reasons. They devour dead plant and animal bits, they aerate the soil and their tunnels allow for water to run down into them which is a very easy way to get water directly to the roots. They also remove CO2 from the system, and they feed the birds. Invertebrates, which do not have a skeleton, they use muscles to move themselves through the moist soil. And, finally, to dispel a myth, if you cut one in two by mistake, you will not have double the number of worms! The section before the saddle - the wide part - will live, and the other will die. It might wiggle around for a bit, but the nerves will eventually give up, and that part will die....sorry...
So, encourage worms as much as possible. They're good for your garden, but maybe even more so for those little folks learning about kindness and compassion. We need a lot of that these days......
Grandson moving a stranded worm back to the soil after a rain.