A is for Ants

Ant day is always a fun preschool day at our house! It’s one of the only days my girls are fascinated by ants, instead of scared of the bugs!!

• Fingerprint Ants
• Read Ants by Nessa Black and learn about ants.
• Make fingerprint ants (using black ink or paint) – 
• three fingerprints, for the three sections of their body
• draw 6 legs
• draw 2 antennas
• draw 2 eyes

• Weigh your preschooler to see how much they could carry if they were an ant! Using the ant they made above, draw something really big on the back of the ant to show how much ants can carry!

• Make an Ant Restaurant
• After reading Ants by Nessa Black, and a Zootles magazine about Ants, discuss what ants like to eat.

• Make an “Ant Restaurant”
• Use a paper plate or preferably a piece of paper (it’s easier for the ants to get to quicker)
• Have your preschooler choose food items they think ants would like to eat. Put them on their restaurant.
• Set the plate/paper outside where there might be ants nearby.
• Check back later!

• Ant Sensory Bin
1. Using rice, wheat, oatmeal, beans, etc in a container, add large plastic ants for the preschoolers to find using tweezers/tongs.
• you could also add black pom poms or black sticker felt pads and have your preschoolers pretend those can be made into ants.
2. After they have found all the ants (and are done playing in their bins), use the ants for math! (see below)

• Ant Math
1. Using large plastic ants (that they found in their sensory bin, above), work on math skills.
• Use a layout like our ant page (with + and =), or simply write + or - and = on a piece of paper.
• Put a number on plastic ants on the left side of the + or - and a number of plastic ants on the right side of the + or – and have your preschooler add/subtract the ants and write the number answer after the equals sign.
• Practice this a few times, saying the math equation with your preschooler. IE:  “3 ants plus 2 ants equals 5 ants”

• How to Walk an Ant by Cindy Derby
• Read How to Walk an Ant, looking for letter Aa’s throughtout the book and finding all the ants.

• Walk an Ant!!
• With the large plastic ants, as used before, tie a piece of yarn around the ant and take it on a walk.
• In the book she walks a lot of ants, so the more the merrier (we stuck with one ant each though!).
• While on your walk check your ant restaurant and observe the ants!

• ART: After your walk, see how tangled your ants got, like in the book!

• Paint a “tangled” art picture, like in the book!
• Use the remnants from the ant lease to dip in paint and pull it across the page to make of colorful line art.
• Add ant stickers.

A is for Ants

• Read “Thinking About Ants” by Barbara Brenner

• Preschool Journal A page … more on this soon.
  1. Practice writing letter A and “Ants”
  2. Draw a picture of ants
  3. Put ant stickers all over!

• Playdoh Ants
  1. Set out black playdoh, toothpicks, small black pipe cleaners & googly eyes.
  2. Have the kids roll three balls of playdoh
  3. Poke three balls onto a toothpick
  4. Add toothpick legs (6 of them!), googly eyes and pipe cleaner antennae (we didn’t have pipe cleaner, so we used toothpicks).

• Ant Math … may work better for older preschoolers.
  1. Print the Ant Math page above and slip into a page protector.
  2. Roll a dice and place that many plastic ants on the head.
  3. Roll again and place that many plastic ants on the thorax. 
  4. Add those two together and write the number on the abdomen.
  5. Erase and start again.
  6. NOTE: this was a little much for my kids. They did it twice, then thought it would be more fun to hide their ant picture and dice and find them. So we did that over and over instead. Oh well!
  7. Other Activities:
     • Draw dots all over the ant page and have the kids place one plastic ant on each dot.
     • Write the ABCs or 123s on the ant, call out a number or letter and have the kids cover it up with a plastic ant.

• Find ants with magnifying glass
  1. Give the kids a magnifying glass and go on an ant hunt.
  2. It’s amazing how many little creatures you discover when you look closely.
  3. My 4-year-old actually found a little ant hill in our garden! We watched tons of little ants carrying eggs and little bits of food. Pretty fascinating!

• Make an ant restaurant … this is a favorite activity for my kids.
  1. Write “ANT Restaurant” on a paper plate.
  2. Place a small sample of several kinds of food on the plate.
     • My kids chose crackers, honey, a blueberry, a piece of peach, chocolate chips, a crouton and chocolate syrup. Yum. 
  3. Place in a shady location and wait!
  4. Come back and see how many ants have visited your restaurant!
  5. *The ants loved the chocolate syrup

A is for Ants

Yesterday was the first day of school for us. We dropped off my 6-year-old for his first day of first grade, then it was time for preschool for the younger two!

• Our alphabet strip is up on the wall. So we found letter A and sang the ABC song. We use the alphabet strip here. I love it!
• We traced Big A and little a in the air with our fingers.

Then on to the ANTS!

• I gave the kids a magnifying glass and we went in the backyard to search for ants. They loved it. We found all sorts of bugs … spiders, flies, beetles and finally some ants! They loved how fast and crazy they ran around. We saw tiny ants and some big, juicy ones.

 

• Then we glued our alphabet page. My 3-year-old wanted to write an A and spell “ANT” all by himself. I think he did pretty well! “TMA” is ANT backwards Then we glued on lots of plastic ants to our A page. I got my ants here and they’ve lasted a couple of years!

 

• Ant Restaurant … this ended up being the highlight of the day!
  1. Use a paper plate and write “ANT restaurant” in the center.
  2. Help your preschooler think of different foods the ants might like to try. We used a grape, cheese, cream cheese, banana slice, a sixlet , honey, peanut butter and a crouton.
  3. Make a guess! Which food will the ants like best? I guessed the banana. My 3-year-old guessed the chocolate Sixlet (his favorite!)
  4. Place the plate outside, in the shade, where you have seen ants before.
  5. Wait.
  6. We came back a few hours later and sure enough, there were ants in our restaurant! The kids were so excited!! They sat and watched those ants for a long time. Obviously they liked the honey best.

• Read Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg
  1. We read this before naptime.
  2. It is about two ants who decide to stay behind in the sugar bowl instead of following the rest of the ants back with their tasty crystals. Their adventure begins when a large scoop (a spoon) shovels them into a hot cup of coffee and they are almost poured into a large, dark cave (a mouth). They are tossed into the toaster, onto the kitchen faucet (a giant waterfall), down the garbage disposal and thrown out of an electrical socket. It’s a fun read seeing everything from the ant’s perspective.

Ants

• Glue A Page … Draw a large letter A, trace with glue, and glue on plastic ants. I got my plastic ants from here .
• Go for a walk. Use a magnifying glass to find ants. My boys loved this!

• Ant Restaurant
  1. Make up a plate of small pieces of food. Use a variety of foods.
  2. Put the plate outside in a low-traffic, shaded spot where you have noticed ants before.
  3. Come back in an hour and see what the ants like to eat!
• Make fingerprint ants
  1. Make fingerprints with black ink … three in a row for one ant!
  2. Use a black crayon to add legs and antennae.

• Clothespin Ant … Parents.com had a cute idea to make clothespin ants to hold down your tablecloth on a picnic.
  1. Paint a clothespin black.
  2. Thread a piece of black pipe cleaner through 2 holes of a black button to make antennae.
  3. Thread 3 pieces of black pipe cleaner through the main spring to make the legs.
  4. Glue the antennae button, plus 2 more black buttons to the top of the clothespin.
  5. Add googly eyes.
  6. Take these cute critters outside and have a picnic!

snack idea: Ants on a log

1. Cut celery sticks in half.
2. Spread peanut butter inside the celery.
3. Add raisins (ants) on top of the peanut butter!