Children seem almost programmed to love digging and seeking out interesting things in the ground. I remember as a child I would love digging for worms from the garden. Whilst getting hands dirty outdoors is lots of fun, this is a cute little indoor activity that will tap into your child’s imagination and help them develop their fine motor skills at the same time.
Possum (aged 3.5 years) has had some time off preschool because of some cheeky bug that had made her feel really unwell. As she was beginning to feel better she was, of course, feeling a little housebound (like me) and looking for some quiet entertainment. I thought it would be a good idea to prepare her a fun and simple craft activity that would have her making pipe cleaner worms and digging through brown rice as a wonderful sensory experience.
Recommended age: 3 years +
(Active supervision is always required on my activities)
Our first task was to make the adorable pipe cleaner worms.
You will need –
- Pipe cleaners cut in half
- Beads
- Glue
- Googly eyes (optional)
To begin, create a loop at one end of the pipe cleaner and have your child thread on the beads. Possum is really starting to recognise and create patterns and so I encouraged her to try out a few colourful patterns using the beads. As you can imagine, this threading activity is wonderful on developing children’s fine motor skills. Just be sure to fold over the end of the pipe cleaner to secure the beads.
How cute are these worms! Before you tell me worms don’t have eyes, I know, but these didn’t look as adorable without eyes. Whilst Possum and I were making them, we talked about how worms moved about even though they don’t have eyes. How do they know where they are going?
Once we were done, I added our worms on a bed of brown rice, which I’d intensified the colour of using food colouring. Now the activity became completely open-ended and Possum was free to play however she pleased. She was only going to be limited by her imagination!
Possum really loved making and playing with this activity. She particularly loved using the brown rice to completely cover up the worms and use tweezers or child-friendly chopsticks to dig around and find them again. It was also very easy to clean and pack up once the playing time was over. I simply stored the whole thing in a large clip seal container for next time.
Would your child love this idea?
I LOVE this!!! And perfect for days like today where it’s not very nice outside!!
Thank you Lucy! Who would have thought worms could be so cute. LOL
I have a 4yr old autistic grandson n I am going to do this for him. We look for new ideas n this one is great. Thank you.
Thanks so much Terri. We found it to be a lot of fun. Enjoy! 🙂
How did you dye the rice?
Great question Laurence! Click this link to find out how I like to dye rice. Have fun.
https://laughingkidslearn.com/2012/10/colouring-rice.html/
Those worms are TOO CUTE… and am I the only one who didn’t know worms don’t have eyes? LOL, I’ll have to ask my boys if they know that! We had some old legumes (soooo out of date- whoops!) that the kids have been playing with the past week, we’ll have to make up some worms to go in 🙂 Thanks for sharing!
I admit I had to google it Chelsea. LOL
What a fun activity. I know my daughter will love making the worms and then finding them. I also love the idea of using tweezers or chop sticks, great for fine motor.
Thanks Krystal. It’s a great activity and one that you can pack up and put away for another time. 🙂