Ant Farms: Observing Insects at Work

Since the 1950's, ant farms have been delighting young nature lovers with their ready access to the life and habits of our ant friends. Uncle Milton was the first to create a commercially available ant farm.

The NASA space program experimented with an edible gel that has transformed the traditional ant farm into a fantastic color and light display. These gel ant farms are illuminated with LED lights and look great on a shelf or desktop.

The newest addition to the ant farm world is a hand held tube that can even project the shadows of ants onto the wall or the ceiling!

Ant farms remain a fascinating way to introduce insect life to children. With an ant farm, it is easy to observe ants in their habitat, creating tunnels and caring for their young. Children can learn about the cooperative colonies that ants create. All kinds of conversations can be generated from children's observations and questions. These conversations can focus on the topic of insect life and behavior or can branch out into areas beyond the study of insects to include human questions of cooperation and the sustainability of the planet.

When I taught grade 4, we had an ant farm in the classroom which generated a lot of student interest. As well as studying insects, we enjoyed the artistic creations of our ant friends. Because the ant farm was filled with colored sand placed in layers, the ants moved the colors around while making their tunnels, transferring red sand here, blue sand there, white sand somewhere else, grain by grain.

Though the ants did not know it (I don't think!) they were mixing colors and creating new patterns. We had a lot of fun returning to the classroom in the morning to see what new developments had taken place. Students whooped in appreciation to see the creation of purples and pinks. I'll bet the addition of yellow to the mix would have produced even more results. 

After a while, there were more muddy grays, but at least for a while we were treated to lots of colorful sand patterns.  

Ants Go Marching: Ideas for Classroom Teachers and Homeschool Families
Ideas for integrating the study of ants with math and literature.

When children have an ant farm to watch and explore, teaching them facts about ants is done within a more helpful context. For example, information about ant body parts, such as head, thorax, and abdomen, makes more sense and is better retained when the ants are right there in front of the students, rather than presented from a book or a picture of one ant.  When the ants are an interesting, moving colony, the children see the three parts again and again and can learn to distinguish the parts in each ant they track. Children also see first hand how many legs the ant has and where the legs attach to the body. When these facts are taught separately from the real living and moving creatures, there is less reason to remember them.

Children watch the ants and observe how they move. After they have spent some time with this free time of watching, you can begin their study with questions such as:

How many parts are there to the ant's body?

How many legs does an ant have?

Where do the legs attach to the rest of the body?

What is attached to the ant's head and what do you think they are for?

Your students will learn and understand the information better when they are involved with collecting the data. Even if they make a mistake, you can redirect them to the ant farm to look more closely and give them the experience of careful observation. They will learn and understand the information better when they have this living experience.

Antweb
Find detailed photos of any species of ant. The site plans to document all 15,000 or so species of ants that exist world wide. So far, they have over 8,000 -- just over half!