Worms and Eggs

With this the last week of school before Spring Break (and Easter occurring during at the end of the break), we have been talking a lot about Bunnies and Baskets this week.  Also about eggs, which go with baskets.

As a result, I got out the plastic eggs to play with on the playground.  Needless to say, the Little People were thrilled when I poured the big bag of them out on the ground, and they got to do what they wished with them.

I kind of thought they would hide them, but they did not.

The first thing they did was throw them.  It wasn't complete random throwing, but instead was attempting to throw them up on the tent/awning above the play structure (seen in the background of the picture below).    They figured out a few months ago that because of the slanted angle of the roof, if they threw balls up on the awning, they would roll off again and they could try and catch them.  Most of the time.  Sometimes the thrown object got stuck, and then we would let them problem solve about how to get it down. (Usually this resulted in someone throwing a bigger ball up against the bottom side of the awning, knocking the stuck object off.)

As this is their custom, I wasn't surprised when the eggs started being launched up on the awning.    Actually, it proved to be quite a challenge to get them up there, since the eggs are so lightweight.  However, this same lightweightedness prevented them from harming anyone as they fell off.  We just called that area near the edge of the awning the "Danger Zone" so anyone playing there would be aware of the risks of falling plastic eggs.

The next step of play with the eggs was to fill them with things.  Some tried to find smaller eggs to put in the larger ones, but most just put wood chips in them.  And then some started digging up earth worms and putting them in the eggs.  I almost put a stop to this, but one of them charmed me with her clever analysis of the situation:  "Hey!  Birds like worms!  So we're just feeding them before they're hatched!"

However, I did have to put my foot down with the first two worm scenarios combined and they started launching wood-chip and worm-filled eggs on top of the awning.  Because all of the sudden we had an egg-launcher shrieking, 'There's a worm on the roof!  There's a worm on the roof!"  And sure enough, if you stood under the awning and looked up, you could see the silhouette of a poor little worm wriggling around on the roof.

I used my own problem-solving skills on that one by getting one of the playground balls and throwing it up under the awning, sending a shower of wood chips, egg parts, and one stranded worm on the nearby onlookers.

Then I banned putting worms into the eggs.

Today they launched the eggs on the awnings, they put wood chips on the eggs - they even sat on a few of them perhaps hoping they would hatch - but they did not (to my knowledge) put worms in them.  It might have upset the (hungry) unhatched baby birds, but I'm pretty sure it kept the worms happy.