What an exciting day in Wormville!!!

One of the cocoons hatched two baby worms today! I had the cocoons in a clear bag so we could see them when they hatch.
We got an awesome new toy called the EyeClops Bionic Eye! It takes pictures and videos at 100, 200, and 400 times magnification! The video below is of the second baby at 200X magnification!!

Wormcicles

We got all of the food blended up and ready for the worms and Shannon and Shoma shredded the newspaper. Before we could add the new bedding we had to separate the worms from all of their castings so there would be room for the new food and new bedding. With a whole lot of shaking we got the worms out and ready for their new environment. Unfortunately, since the fruit and veggies had been frozen it was too cold to add the worms. But what I didn't realize was that there were still about 20 worms hidden in some castings at the bottom of the bucket when we added the food. During a brave rescue attempt I fished them out from the frozen ground up food. They were a little cold, but with Wes's help, we warmed them up! So the worms had to spend the night last night in a little box while they waited for the bed to warm! This morning they made their way into their new home and quickly worked their way down into the bedding.

New Bedding

When I got to Potentials this morning I saw that a few (10 ish) worms were trying to escape the top bin of the original green worm bin, which again, is not a good sign. I'm not sure if they are the same worms that I just put in there from the "food-only" bin or some other ones. Either way, it looks like the bins have been completely composted now, and the worms are ready for some new bedding and fresh new food. The worms essentially need two things, bedding and food. The bedding can be newspaper, cardboard, or dead leaves, and the best food is fruit and veggie scraps.

I brought in my fruit and veggie scraps from home and we can chop them up today to feed to the worms. I keep the food frozen so that it does not smell while we are preparing it for the worms. This bag has used tea leaves, apple cores and peels, cucumber peels, eggshells and broccoli stalks. The food does not HAVE to be chopped, but it makes it easier for the worms to eat and digest. So this afternoon the kids will use the "Airlink" to turn on the food processor and chop up the frozen fruits and veggies. The Airlink is a piece of assistive technology that gives the children control over turning on electrical appliances. We just plug in the appliance, and set the dials and when the kids push the switch the appliance turns on for a predetermined amount of time. The switch is cordless and sends an infrared signal to the Airlink module. Being cordless allows us to bring the switch to each child with the restriction of a short wire.
The kids will also send some newspaper through the shredder and tear up some corrugated cardboard to make the bedding.

EWWWW!!

I had to free the worms from the "food-only" bin today. They were trying to escape from the nasty, smelly, congealed mess of rotting pumpkin! A bunch of worms had crawled up the sides of the container which is a tell tale sign that something is wrong. So if you voted for food only...sorry, that part of the experiment had to be aborted due to dying worms and mass quantities of maggots gathering!