Spell Out Loud

Nothing about spelling, everything about learning

  • Contact
  • About
  • Home
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Homeschool
    • 2012-2013 Homeschool Curriculum Plans
    • 2011-2012 Curriculum
    • Reviews
  • Tots-K
    • ABC Themes
    • Birthday Theme
    • Christmas
    • Early Math
    • Ice Cream Theme
    • Nursery Rhymes
    • Preschool Butterfly Unit
  • Printables
    • ABC Printables
    • Anatomy
    • Bible Printables
    • Christmas
    • Early Learning
    • Misc. Printables
    • Notebooking
    • Preschool Butterfly Unit
  • Preschool Science
    • Preschool Science Archive
  • Nature eBooks
    • Nature Study Printables 2
    • Nature Study Printables for Toddlers and Preschoolers
    • Hummingbird Nature Study
  • Christmas
    • Christmas Books and Activities
    • Holidays
  • How-To’s
  • MOSTLiving
    • Calendar of Events
    • Natural Living articles
    • Chemically-Free
You are here: Home / PreK-K / Observing Ants

Observing Ants

October 5, 2015 by Maureen Spell 5 Comments

Usually I do all I can do to keep ants from entering my house, but this month I actually paid for ants to live with us for awhile. Since we’ve been studying about farms, I thought it would be fun to have an ant farm in the house for observation.  I wanted to allow my preschoolers to see up-close how amazing ants can be. So we did a little ant farm nature unit study.

Ant Farm Nature Unit Study

This is the second time we’ve done an ant farm unit study and I highly recommend the Fascinations AntWorks Illuminated Blue Ant Farm (afflink). It is so cool to see them tunneling through gel!

Ant Farm
At the same time I ordered the farm, I ordered the ants (afflink), because I thought they’d arrive on the same day. It’s no fun to get the ant farm and then have to wait for the ants! My ants arrived in a small package and my ant farm hadn’t even shipped yet! Thankfully, my Facebook  friends helped me come up with a Plan B: a mason jar and damp sand. Our ants lived in that habitat over the weekend. When our ant farm arrived, we transferred the ants to the new habitat (that’s why you can see grains of sand in the picture.)

Ants starting a tunnel

This particular ant farm consists of a special gel that doubles as ant food. The ants are just starting to tunnel in this picture. It was fascinating to watch.

ant farm tunnels

Not only did my preschoolers love to watch, but everyone else in the family too. There was always a chair pulled up to the table to see how far the ants had tunneled for that day. We saw how hard the ants were working! This reminded me of a Bible verse:

6 Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,
8 yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.

Proverbs 6: 6-8

This naturally brought up the topic of diligence. We could see how diligent the ants were working. We could also see that the ants were cooperating together. We pulled out our We Choose Virtue cards and worked on “I am Diligent” for a couple of weeks. If you haven’t seen these cards, they are available as faith-based or community cards. The cards contain adorable, cartoon kids paired with a special “catch-phrase” to learn about the virtue.

Observing ants

I placed a small jar which held several magnifying glasses so that the children could observe details on the ants. Our ants were harvester ants. It was easy to see the mandible, count legs, and count the ant body parts. One thing we wondered was if the ants had a tunnel plan or if they just started tunneling and wherever it went, it went?

Are You an Ant? Backyard Books

One of the ant books we read while observing ants was Are You An Ant? by Judy Allen and Tudor Humphries (afflink). The book taught about ants in a way that captured the attention of my preschoolers. They asked to read this book over and over again, and I often found them looking at the pictures.

Ants starting a tunnel

After two weeks, our ant farm looked like this. Tunnels everywhere! This was truly interesting to watch. We would not have been able to observe these creatures so easily if we didn’t have this ant farm. This is an activity I know we will do again.

More Ant Resources:

Science:

We used a printable ant journal found in my Nature Study Printables for Toddlers and Preschoolers ebook.

ant nature journal

Nature Study Printables for Toddlers and Preschoolers is a 60+ page eBook containing all my toddler and preschool nature study printables on my site plus 20 exclusive pages available only in this book! Use these tools to help informally introduce young children to the natural world around them.

 

$2.99

Add to Cart

Math

Insect sorting and counting activity – Spell Outloud

100 Angry Ants math ideas – Homeschool Share

Early Learning

Ant mini printable pack from Gift of Curiosity

Writing

Hey Little Ant  Writing Prompt – The First Grade Parade

Literature

Sharing is caring!

4 shares
  • Share
  • Tweet

Filed Under: PreK-K, Preschool Science, science Tagged With: ants, blog series, farm unit study, insects, preschool science

Farm Unit Study
P is for Pumpkin

Comments

  1. Lisa M (Farm Fresh Adventures) says

    April 26, 2012 at 2:58 pm

    okay that ant farm has a coolness factors ours didn’t have! LOL! But we loved ours anyways. It WAS fascinating for the whole family and we learned a lot during our insect study!

    Reply
  2. Abby says

    April 26, 2012 at 7:16 pm

    Our library has a whole series of those “Are you an…?” books, and my children love them as well. I agree, your ant farm was a lot more fun than ours was, but our whole family also just sat watching them tunnel. They really are amazing creatures.

    Reply
  3. Lindsay @ Bytes of Memory says

    April 26, 2012 at 9:03 pm

    Okay totally added that ant farm to my wish list on amazon 🙂 My son would LOVE to watch ants work! We did butterflies this Spring and I think we will do ants next!

    Reply
  4. Michelle says

    April 26, 2012 at 10:46 pm

    Very cool. So neat that it lights up! I added it to my wish list too for next school year. Will be looking forward to your ant activities! We made fingerprint ants today for the ants go marching song and it got me excited to study ants next year, LOL!

    Loved your series!

    Reply
  5. Andrea @ No Doubt Learning says

    April 28, 2012 at 1:00 am

    What a great learning experience! We raised butterflies last year and were thinking about hermit crabs soon. This looks much easier and so much fun! I’m “digging” the tunnels! 😛
    ~Andrea

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Nature Study Bundle

$5.00

Add to Cart
Get all 3 nature study resources! Combined there are over 100+ nature printables and resources!
American History I Drew It Then I Knew It Video Art Lessons
Morning Time Subscription Tall Sidebar

Search

Key Words & Past Topics

Archives

Welcome to Spell Outloud! I love to share about educational activities, homeschool encouragement, nature studies and more. Find out more here!

Privacy Policy and Terms of Use

Sign up for our free newsletter!

Dysgraphia

Recent Posts

  • Mama You Need to Fuel Yourself
  • Large Family Math Solutions
  • Chocolate Chia Pudding Parfaits
  • 11th Grade Homeschool Curriculum 2018-2019
  • 5 Reasons Teaching Textbooks is Awesome for Large Families

Copyright Spell Outloud © 2023 All Rights Reserved | Site design by Archer Creative