Anyhow...a few months ago I bought a table top compost bin from Scholastic. It's pretty nifty, it has three different compartments so that you can compare the rate of decomposition of different items.
When we read the story The Day Mother Earth Got Sick and the children talked more about it we decided it would be a good idea to see for ourselves what happens to garbage we through on the ground.
Isn't it wonderful when the children take themselves down the very path you hope they will. The whole reason I bought the compost was in preparation for reading that book in hopes the kids would naturally find their way down this road.
We did some brainstorming and decided to put food in one compartment, paper in another and plasticine in another. We buried them in the soil and documented day one.
A few days later we were lucky enough to be given some composting worms (red wigglers...the Cadillac of worms!) so we put them into the compartment with food. The children insisted the worms not be put into the compartment with paper or playdough since those items were trash and would make our little wormies sick. I think the story really made an impact on them.
We've been documenting the changes every few days. We now have mold. Yuck! But it's also a good sign that things are decomposing. The children are excited by the changes they are seeing. I just hope the worms are eating it!
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