Worm Art

Today we did worm art. That's not a typo. Carson's science lessons lately have centered around soil and how it has everything that plants need to grow. The suggested art project for yesterday was to put a blob of paint onto a piece of construction paper and then to drop a worm into the paint. The purpose was to illustrate the tunnels that a worm makes in soil.

The worms are supposed to inch along the paper dragging the paint with them. This happens when the worms you choose are young and spry and not deprived of oxygen. I am obviously not someone who cares for worms on a regular basis because I didn't think twice about keeping them stored with their tub inside a plastic bag. Worms have to breathe too ya know.

Of course, I knew the more kids we had grossing out over the worms, the better, so I invited Nicole and her kids to share in our fun. She was very grateful. I believe her exact words were, "What if the boys eat the worms?" A valid point.

So, this morning we set seven kids at the table and we had a total of eight worms that survived. A couple of them even squirmed in the paint a little. Overall though, the worms were a flop.

Carson livened things up when she shouted, "Mom! I need a new worm because I broke mine." Sure enough, she had two pieces of worm. Nice. That coupled with Claire feeling the need to toss her dead worm's carcass from hand to hand and give everyone else an extreme close-up of the corpse, really made this project less disgusting. Needless to say, no worm autopsies were performed. Cause of death: oxygen deprivation followed by drowning via paint.