Ants Day 6 -Ant Enemies

Ant Enemies

Discuss:

Anteater- The anteater's tongue can reach two feet in length, and only 1/2 inch wide. The anteater can cover its tongue in a sticky saliva, allowing the ants to stick to it's tongue. It can extend and withdraw it's tongue up to 150 times per minute. When hunting for food, anteaters will use their sharp claws to tear open anthills or rotting wood that might contain ants or termites. Since their eye-sight is poor, they use their noses to smell for food. Then they use their long snouts and tongues to scoop up as many ants and termites as possible. Since they don’t have teeth, they can’t chew the insects. Instead, they swallow them whole. As they eat, they also swallow small pebbles and other debris. These pebbles help them digest the insects by grinding them in the stomach.

Woodpecker- Woodpeckers like to eat ants too. They peck them off of the trees when they climb.

Ant Lion- the ant lion digs a circular sand pit and waits at the bottom. When an ant looks into the pit, the ant lion tosses sand into the air to trip up the ant. The ant stumbles into the pit, and the ant lion grabs it with its large pincers.

Read: Giant Anteater by Sara Antill

Comprehension Questions:

1. Name an animal that eats ants? Anteater, woodpecker, ant lion
2. How does the anteater find the ants? The anteater smells the ants.
3. Why do the ants fall into the ant lion's pit? The ant lion tosses sand into the air to trip the ant.

Ants on a Log

Ingredients:

• Celery Sticks
• Peanut Butter
• Raisins

Directions:
1) Wash the celery
2) Spread peanut butter in u-shaped part of celery.
3) Press raisins into peanut butter.
4) Eat your Ants on a Log

Aunt Farm

Discuss:

Homophones are words that sound alike but have different meanings (ant the insect and Aunt your relative).

Read: Truman's Aunt Farm by Jama Kin Rattigan

Comprehension Questions:

1. What did Truman feed the aunts for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Rice pudding, jelly sandwiches and little hot dogs
2. True or False; The aunts were not having fun and could not wait to get out of Truman's house. False
3. What did Truman's sign say was the cost of each aunt? Free
4. What did Aunt Fran get Truman for his birthday? Ant Farm
5. What was in the package for Truman at the end of the story? Aunt Fran

Directions:

Ant and Aunt

An ant is a small insect that gets into food and usually lives underground.

Your aunt is a woman who is your Mother's or Father's sister.

Fill in each sentence with the correct ant or aunt.

1. There is an ____________ in the sugar bowl.
2. My brother has _____________'s in his pants.
3. My ____________ is coming to visit us.
4. I have an ____________ who lives far away.
5. An ____________ has six legs.
6. My friends gets birthday presents from two ____________'s.
7. Does your _____________ live near here?
8. There must be a hundred ______________s in that hill.
9. Please get the ____________ off that cracker.

Write your own sentence using the words ant and aunt.

Ants Day 5 -Types of Ants

Types of Ants

Discuss: There are over 10,000 kinds of ants. We will learn about a few of them today.

Leafcutter Ant -Leafcutter ants are also known as fungus gardening ants. The leafcutter workers snip off pieces of the plant and carry the leaf bits back to their underground nest. Then the ants chew the leaves, and use the chewed up leaf bits as a substrate on which to grow fungus. The ants eat that fungus. When a queen begins a new colony, she brings a starter culture of fungus with her to the new nest site. 
 
Army Ant -Army ants are nomads. They don't make permanent nests, but instead move into empty rodent nests or holes in the ground. Army ants are typically nocturnal, with nearly blind workers. These carnivores raid other ant nests at night, stinging their prey. When the queen begins laying new eggs and the larvae start pupating, the army ants have to stay in one place for a while. As soon as the eggs hatch and the new workers emerge, the colony moves on. When on the move, workers carry the colony's young. 
 
Carpenter Ant -Carpenter ants don't actually eat the wood like termites do, but they do excavate nests and tunnels in people's homes. Carpenter ants prefer moist wood, so if you've had a leak or flood in your home, be on the lookout for them to move in. Carpenter ants aren't always pests, though. They actually provide an important service in the ecological cycle as decomposers of dead wood. 
 
Slave Maker Ant -One method used by slavemaking ants is replacing the queen of the captive colony. The queen of an established slavemaking colony will lay eggs and produce new queens who then will leave the colony to develop their own colonies. The young slavemaking queen will wait outside of the colony she is leaving and follow a group of raiding slave makers into her new colony. As the worker slavemakers raid this new colony for eggs, the queen takes advantage of the battle by using it to sneak into the colony. Once she finds the other queen, she kills her and takes her place as the new queen. The new queen mimics the old queen by consuming pheromones from her body and releasing them to the attending ants. This new queen having mated with a slavemaking male ants earlier begins to lay new slavemakers eggs. Ant colonies invaded by slavemakers are quickly overcome and forced to support the slavemaking colony. 
 
Fire Ant -Fire ants defend their nests aggressively, and will swarm anything that they think is a threat. The bites and stings of fire ants are said to feel like you're being set on fire – thus the nickname. Fire ants build mounds, usually in open, sunny places, so parks, farms, and golf courses are particularly vulnerable to fire ant infestations. 

Harvester Ant -Harvester ants inhabit deserts and prairies, where they harvest plant seeds for food. They store the seeds in underground nests. If the seeds get wet, the harvester ant workers will carry the food above ground to dry them and keep them from germinating. Like fire ants, harvester ants will defend their nest by inflicting painful bites and venomous stings. 

 

Read: Ant by Rebecca Stefoff

Comprehension Questions:

1. Name a few different kinds of ants?
2. What kind of ant have fungus gardens? Leafcutter Ants
3. What kind of ant feels like your on fire when your bitten? Fire Ant

Different Kinds of Ants

We used page 5 of this download to review the Different Kinds of Ants.  Then we used pages 23 and 24 of the same download to make a Kinds of Ants Matchbook.

Ant Word Search

We used did the Ant Word Search for fun today.  Plus it has some interesting facts about Argentine Ants.

The Ants Go Marching

Read:  The Ants Go Marching! by Dan Crisp

Directions:

Use the Counting Practice worksheet for counting by 1's through 10's.

Ant Aunt Homophones

Discuss:

Homophones are words that sound alike but have different meanings (ant the insect and Aunt your relative).

Read: Dear Deer by Gene Barretta

Comprehension Questions:

1. Aunt Ant meets a moose. Can you think of a homophone for moose?

2. Aunt Ant sees a ewe. Can you think of a homophone for ewe?

3. Aunt Ant sees a horse. Can you think of a homophone for horse?

4. The bat hangs from his feet. Can you think of a homophone for feet?

5. The monkey hangs from his tale. Can you think of a homophone for tail?

6. Aunt Ant sees a doe. Can you think of a homophone for doe?

7. Aunt Ant shares a seesaw with a toad. Can you think of a homophone for toad?

8. Aunt Ant is looking at a great big whale. Can you think of a homophone for whale?

9. Aunt Ant is looking at a huge bear. Can you think of a homophone for bear?

10. Aunt Ant sees a bee fly away. Can you think of a homophone for bee?

 11. Aunt ant sees two gnus. Can you think of a homophone for gnus?

Activity:

We made homophone matches using clipart online. Split the matches between me and the J and have him pick up a card and tell me what it was... I respond by saying, "but I have_____". He also liked playing memory with the homophone matches!

Ants Day 4 -Ant Colony

Ant Colony

Discuss: How an Ant Colony Starts:

1) After hot summer rain, a young queen takes off on her wedding flight. She flies into a cloud of male ants and mates in the air.

2) Afterward, all the males die, and the queen returns to the earth. She breaks her wings off by rubbing them on the ground.

3) Then she digs a hole in the soft, moist earth and starts laying eggs. She will never leave the nest again.

4) During the next 3 months, the eggs develop through four stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult ant.

5) After they have hatched, the first workers assume the duties of the colony-- searching for food and protecting the queen.

Most ant species build underground nests. Worker ants dig tunnels and chambers, in the soil. Workers add more tunnels and chambers to the nest, as the colony grows. If you watch ants closely, you will see that they really do communicate with each other! Ant colonies can grow to be quite large. Some tropical ants build downward to make more rooms. Their nests can reach twenty feet deep. A group of nests can cover an area as large as a tennis court. Millions of ants can live in the big nests.

Chambers-

• The queen has her own chamber for laying eggs.
• Some chambers are nurseries for the growing young ants.
• Food is stored in other chambers.
• Still other chambers are resting places for hard-working ants.
  

Read: Ant Cities by Arthur Dorros

Thinking Skills:

1. In economics, what does it mean to be interdependent? People are interdependent when they depend on each other to provide the goods and services they use.
2. In what way does an ant city illustrate interdependence? The ants in an ant city have certain jobs.They all depend on each other  for survival.
3. What are some of the special jobs done by the ants? Queen – lays eggs; Workers – do all the work in the ant city and also fight to protect the nest
4. What would happen if the different types of ants didn’t do their special jobs? The ants could not survive unless they worked together.
5. What are some of the special jobs in your city or community that people do? Teachers, electricians, pastors, doctors, mail carriers, police officers, farmers, store owners, etc.
6. How do these people in your community depend on one another? The people in the community have certain jobs. Then, they exchange the money they earn and pay others for the goods and services that are provided. All of us are interdependent in that we rely on others to provide most of the goods and services we use.
7. Is it good to be interdependent? Specializing in production and then trading to get the goods and services one wants does make production more efficient, providing society with more goods and services. Usually, this is good for everyone. But sometimes interdependence can be troublesome. For example, our country relies heavily on oil produced from other countries. In most cases, that is not a problem, but when there is political instability, prices may rise dramatically and our dependence becomes very costly.

Ant Hill

Materials:

• Brown Construction Paper
• Black and White Paint
• Paint Brush

Directions:

1. Cut out the brown paper in the form of a hill.
2. Paint black ant tunnels going down and side to side. Let it dry.
   
3. Use your finger to make fingerprint ants with white paint on the black tunnels.
   
    Then J wanted to decide what room would be best for each of the ant rooms so I wrote down what he decided.
   

Study Ants

Directions: Go for a walk and look for ants. What are they doing? Follow them back to their homes. 

Have the child divide the plate into fourths with a marker. 

Set out a plate of 4 different foods (9 pieces/ crumbs of each food) near the anthill (away from the house). Predict what they will like the best. 

At the end of the day go out and check up on the plate to see if any ants have come for a meal. What did they like best? 

We used this Ant Graph to record the results.

Ant Hill In A Cup

Materials:

• Clear plastic cups
• Chocolate pudding
• Graham crackers
• Ziploc bag
• Chocolate sprinkles

Directions:

1. First put a layer of chocolate pudding into the cup for the “dirt”.
2. Then crush up graham crackers in a plastic ziploc bag and poured the crumbs into the cup for the anthill “sand”.
3. Last, they added chocolate sprinkles for the “ants”.
   

Ants Day 3 -Ant Jobs

Ant Jobs

Discuss: There are three main ant jobs; queen ant, worker ants, and male ants.

Queen Ant- Queen ant lays all the eggs and she is the mother of all the ants in the nest. All queens start out with wings. All have large abdomen's to produce eggs. Some can lay millions of eggs per year.

Male Ants- All males have wings and do no work in the colony. They can be seen for only a few weeks in the summer while they mate with the queen.

Worker Ants- All workers are female, but they do not lay eggs. Females are the smallest ants, they do all the chores: clean the nest, gather food, take care of the babies and defend the colony. Some species such as carpenter ants and fire ants have several sizes of workers; the larger workers have different job duties than the smaller workers.

Worker Jobs- Workers have many different jobs to do. They begin their work by cleaning themselves. A couple days later they start sharing food and licking each other. Here are a some of the different jobs done by the worker ants.

Queen Tender- Young ants help the queen deliver her eggs by grabbing the eggs with their mandibles.

Nurse Ant- Young ants lick larvae so they do not dry out, and feed them so they grow.

Tunnel Diggers- Young ants dig tunnels and new chambers to store eggs and larvae and food.

Guard- These ants stand near the entrance of the nest, blocking strange ants from entering.

Foragers- The oldest ants search for food. Most foragers search within 50 feet of the nest, but if food is scarce, they may travel thousands of feet.

Read: Ant Colony by Kathy Furgang

Comprehension Questions:

1. What are the three types of ants? Queen ant, male ants, worker ants
2. What does the queen ant do? Lay the eggs
3. What do the worker ants do? Take care of baby ants, dig tunnels, guard nest an forage for food

Things I Can Remember

We used the Things I Can Remember to Do Without Being Told ant writing paper for this activity.  We talked about how ants just know what to do, there is no one ant in charge.  Then we talked about what J could do without being told.

Aesop's Fable: The Ant and The Grasshopper

Discuss:

In Bible times and pioneer days, almost every family had to plant a garden in the spring in order to have enough food for the next winter. Ants also work to prepare for future needs, gathering and storing food in warm weather, before winter comes.

It [the ant] has no commander, no overseer or ruler, the ant stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. (Proverbs 6:7)

Ants, known for being hard workers, are commended by God for their initiative. Ants have no leader—no commander to direct them, no overseer to inspect their work, no ruler to prod them on. People should learn from the ant and not act only when commanded.

Read: The Ant and the Grasshopper by Mark White

Comprehension Questions:
• Who are the two characters in the story?
• Why is the Ant working so hard?
• Why is the grasshopper telling him to stop?
• When winter comes what is the grasshopper’s problem?
• How does he solve his problem?
• What lesson does he learn from this experience?

Directions:

We used page 41 of this download for our Aesop's Fable story.

Picnic Ant Place Mat

Read: Ants at the Picnic by Michael Dahl

Discuss:

1. Fun Facts on page 24 of Ants at the Picnic by Michael Dahl
2. Find the Numbers on page 24 of Ants at the Picnic by Michael Dahl
3. 3.  Get your bag of tiny ants and estimate how many ants you have. Then counting ants by 10's pull out a large quantity of plastic ants. Children take a handful of plastic ants and place them in groups of tens on the placemat, then record the number of ants.
   
   

Materials:

• Red and White Construction Paper
• Black Paint
• Black Marker
• Clear Con-Tact Paper
• Scissors

Instructions:
1. Fold the white paper in half and cut lines from the folded side to the other side (but stop cutting about an inch from the side). Cut lines about an inch apart.

2. Weave the red strips through the white strips of paper by going over the first piece then under the next piece and so on, alternating the rows. Keep the red pieces as close together as possible. 

                                                  

3. Continue weaving your paper pieces until you have used all the red pieces of paper or until all of the white strips are full.

4. Add a couple of ants to your picnic place mat by dipping a fingertip into black paint and making three overlapping fingerprints to form an ant's body. 

                                     

5. Let the paint dry and then use the black marker to draw on six legs and antennae.

6. Finish the place mat by cutting two pieces of clear Con-Tact paper so they are at least and in larger all around than your place mat. Pull the paper backing off of one piece of cut Con-Tact paper. Carefully lay this piece, sticky side down, on top of your place mat. Smooth out all air bubbles as you lay it down. Now, flip over your place mat and cover the backside. Trim the edges of the Con-Tact paper about half an inch bigger than the place mat. Your picnic place mat is now ready to use!

Then we had a picnic lunch!

Proverbs 6:6

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! (Proverbs 6:6)

• Who wrote this verse? King Solomon
• What does it mean? to be a hard worker like the ant
• Does God want us to walk on all fours like ants do? no
• What can we learn from ants? to work hard with no one telling us what to do

Physical traits describe someone’s appearance (tall, skinny, blue-eyed, curly-haired, petite, etc.). Character traits describe someone’s personality (brave, stubborn, hard worker, polite, shy, etc.). What do you think God wants us to learn about ants? Physical traits or character traits?

 Directions:  We used our Bible and page 26 from this download for our Proverbs 6:6 Bible verse.

Ants Day 2 -Ant Life Cycle

Ant Life Cycle

Discuss: Life Cycle:

Egg - queen ants lay tiny oval shaped eggs

Larva - worm like larva keep growing causing their skin to shed; they don't have eyes or legs

Pupa - once the larva reaches a certain size, it spins a cocoon and pupates; during the time in the cocoon, the ant's body changes to adult form

Adult - the pupa emerges out of the cocoon into an adult nt

A worker ant generally lives about four years. However, the queen can live up to 10 or 20 years!

Read: The Life Cycle of an Ant by Trevor terry & Margaret Linton

Comprehension Questions:

1. What are the four stages of the ant life cycle? Egg, larva, pupa, adult
2. Who lays the eggs? Queen ant
3. What is an ant larva like? Don't have eyes or legs
4. What happens in the pupa stage? Ant larva spins a cocoon to change to an adult

Ant Life Cycle Activity
Discuss:  The life cycle of the ant consists of four stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Fertilized eggs produce female ants (queens, workers, or soldiers); unfertilized eggs produce male ants.

EGG- Ant eggs are oval shaped and tiny (they are on the order of 1 mm long, but the queen's egg is many times larger).

LARVA- The worm-like larvae have no eyes and no legs; they eat food fed to them by adult ants. The larvae molt (shed their skin) many times as they increase in size.

PUPA- After reaching a certain size, the larva spins a silk-like cocoon around itself and pupates. During this time the body metamorphoses (changes) into its adult form.

ADULT The pupa emerges as an adult. The entire life cycle usually lasts from 6 to 10 weeks. Some queens can live over 15 years, and some workers can live for up to 7 years.

Directions:  We used the Ant Life Cycle print out for a review.

The Ant Year: A Year in the Life of an Ant

April – open nest

May – time to mate and lay eggs

June – larvae grows and grows

August – work, work, work

November through March – hibernation

We made a book on page 35 of this download for our A Year in the Life of an Ant activity.

Ants Go Marching in a Number Line

Materials:

• A die labeled with +1, +2, +3, -1, -2, -3
• Little plastic ants
• A number line that goes as high as you need

Directions:

1. Each player puts their counter at the beginning of the number line at 0
2. The players take turns rolling the die/cube and moving their counter along the number line by the number rolled on the die/cube. (Player says the number square he is on and then says +3 if that is what he rolls and says the answer.) If a player lands in the same box as another player, the other player goes back a space.
3. The first player to reach the end of the number line wins!