Kids Love Wormeries – See Why!
Posted by Wormery, under Guides.
Children are fascinated by the world around them and curious to explore everything they can get their hands on. A home wormery, also known as a worm farm, provides the perfect chance for kids to explore their world and learn valuable lessons about recycling and persevering nature at the same time. A wormery provides a view of how worms break down recyclable materials, such as food scraps and old newspapers, and turn them into rich compost that can then be used on plants and in gardens.
Kids not only enjoy watching how this process works, but are delighted by watching the worms crawl in and out of the soil. They may want to touch or hold the worms and can be given a daily chore of feeding extra scraps into the wormery. A wonderful way to remind children to recycle is to reward them for dumping their leftover food and other recyclable materials into the wormery instead of throwing these items into the trash can.
Children can learn about recycling, worms, and the various processes that take place in a wormery in other ways too:
- Gardening - Let children help out by adding compost to outdoor gardens, indoor potted plants, or as fertilizer for a front lawn.
- Watering - Allow children to drain out "worm tea" through the spigot of the wormery and water potted plants with it to help the plants grow strong and healthy.
- Science Projects - Building and using a wormery makes a creative science experiment. Children can monitor how much compost worms produce weekly, which foods worms like best, or how fast worms can reproduce.
Children will learn about the life of a worm along with just one of the various ways to recycle. These are both important lessons and lessons that children will be interested in and curious to learn more. For the child who isn't scared of touching worms, allow them to add new worms to the wormery. If you have a garden or a yard that isn't doing well, children can add worms to the garden or lawn so the worms can burrow into the ground and begin creating tunnels. These tunnels break up the soil to allow easy water flow and loose soil to promote root growth. The nutrient rich soil will also encourage healthy plants and grass. Wait until enough worms have reproduced that you still have plenty in your wormery to keep creating compost to add to your plants.
Best Wormery for Children
While the overall basic design is the same for each wormery, there are exceptions. Consider purchasing a wormery that is clear on the outside and allows you and your children to peer into each level to see what the worms are doing and how much food they've broken down that day. A wormery that a child cannot see through will quickly lose their interest, but a clear wormery makes it easy for them to observe the previously hidden world inside your home worm farm.