Morning Class:
This morning we continued our exploration of insects! A game we played you could try at home...see below! The highlight was recreating an ant tunnel, complete with a Queen ant, eggs, kitchen, soldier lookouts, and worker ant rooms. They became quite elaborate with bridges and thrones! Simon had a question; can ants climb walls? There was one way to find out; introduce an ant into the home! We went to our ants nest and collected an ant to test out the home; yes, ants can climb walls!
Afternoon Class:
We began by exploring and collecting the edibles that are growing in our forest. We began sewing a cloth to mount our preserved specimens; some will continue their next week! Another highlight was beading: we are creating trees out of wire and beads, which we will work on each Sit Spot and put together in a few weeks. They would like more beading time next week; the answer is, of course!
Activities for at home!
Make an ant house: using a cardboard box, creating rooms and hallways (tunnels) that an ant would use. There are bedrooms, kitchens, food storage rooms, rooms for the eggs, a nursery, a queen ant room, and soldier ants posted at the entrances. After this, take it outside and run an experiment; place different food items (fruit, cracker, bread, etc) in the house, or on a plate nearby. Observe which food the ants love best!
Beetle/Ant Predator/Prey: you are the beetle, and your children are the ants. Scatter items they have to collect (the 'food') around the space. The beetle tries to tag the ants as they try to collect the food items and bring them back to their designated safe space, or nest. This gets harder as the game goes on!
Bug Catching! Beetles, ants, spiders - catch, observe, and release! The children can't get enough of this! Flipping over rocks or at the base of trees is a good spot to find bugs.
Edibles: see if your child can recognize anything they found in the bluff, at home. Is there anything growing around you that is edible?