One day Carter was playing in the backyard and found a worm. He was so excited and couldn't wait to show it to me. Once he had, he was full of questions about worms. I asked him if he wanted to do a learning theme on worms to learn more about them and he was so excited. All he wanted to talk about was putting together his worm farm and couldn't wait until we started our learning on worms.
Listed below are the objectives I am focusing on for the themed weeks. I have revised our objectives to really hone in and focus on specific skills Carter will need to master before kindergarten and are appropriate to his age and development right now. I plan to continue to implement activities to practice and reinforce our previous objectives while putting more emphasis on our new objectives. Some of them won't necessarily be targeted with specific activities during our weeks, but I wanted to list them to help me remember to practice them continually. I'm also adding in a section for Elise now that she is a year old. I don't considers her bullet points objectives, they are experiences I want to make sure to expose her to frequently. Her experiences are listed below Carter as bullet points rather than numbers.
The highlighted objectives below are ones Carter received exposure to during our theme this week:
- Begin to organize and focus on writing. (Dictate stories, plan out a story, draw pictures and scribbles to create a book).
- Understand same and different.
- Accurately tell stories as well as retell the story from a book.
- Use age appropriate scissors. (I'm moving on to looking for a thumb and forefinger grasp with writing tools and holding scissors appropriately)
- Develop a better understanding of time (for example, be able to describe when things happen using morning, afternoon, night)
- Group objects based on a category (sort by defining feature).
- Count with one-to-one correspondence, begin to identify numerals, being to use ordinal numbers (first, second, last).
- Pretend play/Imitate the behaviors of others.
- Begin to identify and point at body parts. (Right now I just want to say body parts aloud to her frequently and point them out on myself)
- Group based on simple characteristics. (This is something I will do while talking aloud and allowing her to feel objects)
- Fill and empty containers.
- Begin to hold writing tools and scribble spontaneously.
- Our first order of business was putting together our worm farm. Carter was so incredibly excited he could hardly contain himself. I had a worm farm I bought to use at school and had kept to the side when I packed my things up, thinking Carter would enjoy it some day. Our soil isn't the best so I bought some potting soil and then we added a few layers of sand so we could really easily see how the worms were moving around and mixing the soil up.
Carter checking out his worm farm after we had it all together. - Before we added the worms to our worm farm, I let Carter touch them and observe them. I put them in the lid of a disposable pan which we had not needed. I let him sift through to look at the worms and compare them. We talked about what they looked like, pointing out how they all were the same and then some of the ways they looked different. Then I put a fake fishing worm into the lid and had him compare it to the real worms. We talked about how they were the same and how they were different.
Observing the worms and then comparing them to the fake worm. - Throughout our learning theme Carter took care of the worms and observed them daily. I pulled the worm farm down so we could check for anything new they had done. I asked him how the soil looked the same as it had before and how it looked different. We looked at their tunnels, checked to see if the sand had been mixed any more, made sure the soil was damp, and checked to see if they had eaten anything. Carter used a dropper to add water to the worm farm when the soil seemed to be getting dry. We also tried feeding the worms different things. Carter collected leaves to add which they did eat. We also put part of an orange peel in at one point and the top of a strawberry in.
Putting some water in our worm farm. 
Observing our worms and noticing any changes in the soil. 
Adding an orange peel to the worm farm. 
Putting leaves in for the worms to eat.
- I put together a sensory bin using fishing lure worms along with some large tweezers, some cups, and a bucket. The base of the bin was rice which I attempted to dye brown but ran out of red so it turned out with quite a bit of green and looked like camo. Carter didn't mind though. He loved playing with the worms, hiding them under the rice, digging them up, picking them up with the tweezers, and filling the bucket with rice or worms.
- One of my favorite things to do with Carter during these learning themes is write books. It is so much fun to see his imagination at work and to see his storytelling improve. He has gotten really good at making up stories and planning them out in a sequential order that makes sense. When we are in the car driving he likes to make up pretend stories to tell me and sometimes tells me stories about things that actually happened. Sometimes his stories are gibberish, but for the most part they at least make sense. Carter had named some of the worms in his sensory bin and I had him choose one to write a book about. He chose Sally. Once we sat down to write the story he decided he didn't want to write anymore so I started sentences and had him finish them. For example I said, "Sally lives in the..." and he filled in the rest. Once he got started he was more into it. I've found he loves storytelling, but doesn't want to sit down to dictate a story to me and that's fine. Lately what I've been doing is letting him tell me a story and just writing it down in the moment as he's talking, rather than sitting down at a specific time and asking him to make up a story. He helped illustrate the page about Sally being a worm and then turned it over to the back and made up a story about Sally and all her friends (that's the page after Sally is a worm.) which took up so much time I was able to illustrate the rest of the book as he did it. It was fun to hear his crazy story about Sally and her friends.
- I showed Carter how to draw a worm by making a really long oval. Then I made him a worm puzzle with his name. I put a letter of his name in each of the worm's segments. I made sure to just draw a mouth on the worm since they have no eyes. Carter loved that his puzzle had his name in it. As he put it together I broke his name into sounds so he could find the letter that went next. I had to help him with a and e since they are part of the /ar/ and /er/ blends. He was able to figure out C, t, and the rs on his own.
- I save all the games that come in Carter's Highlights magazines. For this week I pulled out "Go Slow" which was a game where we were worms and wanted to move slowly. Whoever made it to the end last was the winner. The game's name says it all, it was a slow moving game and Carter only made it through about half-way before he wanted to move on to something else.
Playing Go Slow in the car on the way to St. Louis. - We played with Play Doh, practicing rolling out the Play Doh to make worms. Then we used some Play Doh worm mats I found here to practice counting worms. Carter would roll out worms and we would count to make sure he had made the correct number of worms. I made sure to point out the number written in the bottom corner of the mat and emphasize multiple times that it stood for the number of worms we had on the mat.
Making worms on our Play Doh worm mat.
- Elise got to get in on the worm fun with us. We played with her by using fishing lure worms. We would put one on her and tell her "There is a worm on your ______," to introduce her to body parts. She thought it was hilarious and loved grabbing the worm off and biting at it.
Elise, the worm is on your head! 
Elise, the worm is on your arm! - I put all the fishing lure worms in a bucket for Elise to dump out. She just wanted to pull the worms out of the bucket one at a time instead of dumping them out. I even showed her how I dumped them out multiple times but she wasn't interested. I tried to get her to put the worms back in the bucket, but she would take off crawling away from me with the worm hanging out of her mouth. It was hilarious! Her favorite thing to do was crawl around with a worm in each hand and one in her mouth. They seemed to be a great teething toy because she'd put them in her mouth and pull as though they were helping her gums. The only problem was I had to watch her very closely to make sure she didn't bite part of a worm off and choke on it.
- While Elise was playing with the fake worms, Carter wanted to get in on the action so I had him make color patterns with the worms. I'd make a pattern and have him tell me what would come next in the pattern. Then he did the same for me.
Making a pattern, Carter tends to work right to left rather than left to right when building patterns. 
He tried to trick me with an ABBA pattern.
- We used the fishing lure worms to make paintings. It was actually really cool to see the different kinds of designs and textures that could be made by turning the worm different ways. We ended up doing this activity when I was watching a friend's son. Both boys loved painting with the worms.
Carter wanted to make a colorful handprint.
- Carter enjoyed gummy worms as a special treat. We used them to discuss patterns as each worm was made up of a simple AB color pattern. When I gave Carter the worms he sorted them based on their colors. I also laid the worms out to make patterns and asked him to describe the pattern to me. Our worms had either a red/yellow, red/green, or red/white pattern. We compared the different color patterns and talked about how they were the same and how they were different. As I laid out worms, Carter counted them to see how many we had. Carter also compared the gummy worms to the fishing lure worms and told me how they were the same and how they were different.
Pointing out the color that was on this worm and not the other. 
Comparing the fishing lure worm to the gummy worm.
- One night for dessert we made dirt cups. Carter helped me make the pudding and add the whipped cream. His favorite part of helping was licking off the whisk when we were done and his chocolatey face was the cutest! As we added the gummy worms to the top we used ordinal words to describe what we were doing. That worm went in first, that worm went in next, that worm went in last. We had lots of practice because we put 3 worms in each cup. It worked out great because we used the leftover cups from Elise's birthday party, I just cleaned the Almond Bark and sprinkles off the rim.
Adding milk to the pudding. 
Tasting the pudding as he mixed it. 
Adding worms to the dirt cups. 
He was super excited to eat it.
- We had so much fun playing with our worms in the sensory bin. Carter named the worms and we would make them talk to each other. We pulled out one of his bird stuffed animals and he would pull it out and all the worms would hide under the rice. Every once in a while the bird would catch a worm and then bring it back. Carter would say it was raining and we'd make the worms come up to breathe. Then he'd say it stopped raining and the sun was out. He would tell all the worms, "Hurry, get back in the dirt before you dry out!" It was really neat to see him acting out what he had learned about worms.
The bird getting worms while we played.
- I found this incredibly fun game idea here. I planned on doing our own version of it inside but Carter decided he didn't want to be a worm, he wanted to be a bird. He was a bird and pretended that shoes were worms. He used a clothes hanger to pick worms up and to eat and to feed to sissy (the baby bird). It was cute because he said he was a baby bird, I was the mommy bird, sissy was a baby bird, and daddy was the daddy bird. Daddy was off working to find food for us and that's why he wasn't there (he was at work).
- For practice with positional words I used a fishing lure worm and made up words to the tune of My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. I would put the worm somewhere and then sing about where it was, making sure to focus on over, under, on top of, above, beside, below. For example:
My worm is under the plate.
My worm is under the plate.
My worm is under the plate,
that is where my worm likes to be.
- We sang There's a Worm at the Bottom of the Garden. I found this cute printable here.
- We went on a few different worm hunts. Our first worm hunt was a hike and as we walked we searched for signs of worms: small holes and castings (poop). We were surprised and excited to find a lot of worm castings on our walk. We went on a couple other worm hunts after it had rained, hoping to find some worms out and about. We were surprised that we didn't find many worms. We were hoping to be able to help worms not dry out by putting them back in the dirt if they were on the sidewalk. Another time we went the day after it had rained and found some dried out worms on the sidewalk. We were able to use those opportunities to talk about why worms come up out of the ground and why they dry up when they are on the ground for too long.
Looking at worm castings on our walk. 
Searching for worms after it had rained. 
We found a worm that had come out but drowned in a puddle.
- Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin
- Yucky Worms by Vivian French
- Worms for Lunch? by Leonid Gore
- Marty McGuire Digs Worms! by Kate Messner
- The Game of Finger Worms by Herve Tullet
- Wiggling Worms at Work by Wendy Pfeffer
- Wonderful Worms by Linda Glaser
- Garden Wiggler: Earthworms in your Backyard by Nancy Loewen
- Wiggle and Waggle by Caroline Arnold
- Bob and Otto by Robert O. Bruel
- Underground by Denise Fleming
- An Earthworm's Life by John Himmelman
- The Life Cycle of An Earthworm by L.L. Owens
- Annelids: Earthworms, Leeches, and Sea Worms by Beth Blaxland
- Dirt by Ellen Lawrence
- Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner
- Dig In! Learn About Dirt by Pamela Hall
- It's A Good Thing There Are Earthworms by Jodie Shepherd
- Inch by Inch by Leo Lionni
- Rooting for You by Susan Hood
- Are You Ready to Play Outside? by Mo Willems
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