The Ants Go Marching

For this day we learned a few different types of ants. We also had fun with homophones and counting to 100. The boys love the books that you can sing with, so I found the big book of The Ants Go Marching at the library for them.

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:

Name a few different kinds of ants?
What kind of ant have fungus gardens? Leafcutter Ants
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.

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!

Here are the other days of our Ant Unit Study:

Ant Unit Study

Day 1 Ant Anatomy

Day 2 Ant Live Cycle

Day 3 Ant Jobs

Day 4 Ant Colony

Day 5 Types of Ants

Day 6 Ant Enemies

Today we learned about the life cycle of an ant. We also learned about an ant year and played a math game. T liked playing with those tiny plastic ants that I found. He seems to like bugs more than J does. I’m glad he doesn’t take after his Mama, I can’t stand them!

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:

What are the four stages of the ant life cycle? Egg, larva, pupa, adult
Who lays the eggs? Queen ant
What is an ant larva like? Don’t have eyes or legs
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:

Each player puts their counter at the beginning of the number line at 0
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.
The first player to reach the end of the number line wins!