Ants On Parade

Testing our hypothesis-ants prefer to eat sweeter foods...not always the case!

Another great day learning about NATURE! Lots of tics out today! We did tic checks, but didn't find many until about an hour later. Be sure to check your child throughout the day and before they go to bed. I had 3 on me!

 

 

 We began our day by discussing ant behavior and characteristics. We read a wonderful book called Those Amazing Ants by Patricia Brennan Demuth. In this detailed and informative picture book, the author describes the ant's colonies and various chambers they build underground-used for things like a nursery or food storage and even a place for sick and injured ants.

 

Did you know that all the ants you see walking around are female? These are called female workers. Some females take care of the eggs and larva. Other ants are busy finding food and others are like soldiers, capturing enemies and making them slaves.

 

The male ants have wings, mate with the queen and then die. They are not around for very long.

 

As scientists, we conducted an experiment to see which foods ants would most likely eat? We placed banana, bread, chicken and sugar water on paper plates and placed them in the garden, by the mailbox, in the walkway and out back in a sand pile. The 2 popular ant locations proved to be the walkway and the sand pile and the ants were eating all food items equally!

 

 

After reading If You Find a Rock by Peggy Christian, we were on the hunt for rocks. Today's adventure led us down to the river and out Stowe Road. We found hiding rocks, skipping rocks, resting rocks and splashing rocks. This is a great book about all the fun things to do with different types of rocks.

 

 

Wednesday's explorers made Big Ant Eyes with egg cartons and pipe cleaners