Worm Composting Workshop
Friday afternoon the boys and I attended a workshop on vermicomposting, or worm composting, put on by a lady who runs a small business in Calgary, Worms at Work. There were 30 or so young homeschoolers in attendance—including some friends that we didn’t realize would be there—along with about a dozen Moms. The boys are now VERY keen to get a worm composter (if you’ve given this a go, I’d love to hear your experiences!). And we all learned things about worms that we didn’t know before, which made for a fun afternoon. Yeah, we’re geeks. 
The workshop started off with the lady attaching various velcro hats to a large cardboard worm, to illustrate the various roles worms play, such as recycler, “pirate” (they turn garbage to gold), and construction worker (note the hard hat) in our soils:
She then had some Mom’s show the kids some samples of finished worm compost. It was rich and black and crumbly—nothing at all like the typical alkaline clay soils of Calgary!
She also showed a picture of two identical plants, one grown with worm compost and one in regular, unamended soil. The worm soil plant was far larger and healthier-looking, and it was flowering when the other was still forming buds (sorry I didn’t get a better pic of this):
We then got a quick lesson on worm anatomy, focussing on the differences between worms and humans. She covered both the obvious (worms lack arms and legs, but do have little grippers called setae), and the not-so-obvious. Even I learned things here, like that worms have 5 hearts than beat in succession, only 2 types of muscles (circular and longitudinal), they have a crop and a gizzard like birds, and they lack lungs, eyes, ears, and a sense of smell. They proceed by sense of touch, and dislike light (though red light bothers them less, so use a red flashlight if you go looking for nightcrawlers). I never got to ask how worms sense the light that they dislike given their lack of eyes, but hey—it’ll give us something to google tomorrow.
She then passed around little containers with the worms themselves (and a bit of plant material), a part my boys found fascinating. Daegan asked what species of worm it was (no surprise from The Classification Kid!) and we found out they are called eisenia hortensis. They are in the same family, but a somewhat larger and hardier species than the typical ‘red wiggler’ (eisenia fetida) composting worm.
You can see the worm on the right-hand side of the below picture:
While the boys were engrossed with the worms, I went over to check out the open compost bin. It looked a sight, with the mix of decaying plant material, cardboard, leaves and shredded newspaper, but there was no smell whatsoever:
The workshop ended with a kid-friendly (read: cheesy and educational) video about worms, called Wormania. The coolest part was getting to see a worm’s 5 hearts beat, IMO. There were some parts that some parents might be uncomfortable with their young children watching, especially the section on reproduction. My children, on the other hand, were still singing the “worm sperm” / “it’s mating time” song in the car on the way home.
We’re going to talk it over more, and get more info (given Gareth’s severe allergy to mold, I am concerned about mold in the bins. Anyone with experiences to share?), but we may well give vermicomposting a go. Would make for some interesting hands-on science learning, I think.