1st grade
March 2, 2023
Ant Activities – Insect Lesson For Kids

Ant Activities – Insect Lesson For Kids

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We are starting our hands on bug unit by learning about ants for kids. Make a cute ant craft that helps kids understand the importance of all the apendages or the colony inside that ant hill, plus lots of ant activities, insect printables, ant life cycle, and lots of other fun ideas! This ant lesson plant is perfect for  toddler, preschool, pre-k,  kindergarten, first grade, and 2nd graders too.

We are starting our hands on bug unit by learning about ants for kids. Make a cute ant craft that helps kids understand the importance of all the apendages or the colony inside that ant hill, plus lots of ant activities, insect printables, ant life cycle, and lots of other fun ideas! This ant lesson plant is perfect for  toddler, preschool, pre-k,  kindergarten, first grade, and 2nd graders too.

Ants lesson plan for preschool

My kids have a natural fascination with creepy crawly bugs, so for our science we dove into an insect unit to explore the amazing bugs around us. First up, the amazing, underrated ants1 We did lots of ant activities for preschoolers including ant crafts preschool, science activities, ant life cycles, printables, and so much more! This ants for kids lesson is perfect for toddlers, preschoolers, kindergartners, and grade 1 students too. Whether you are a parent, teacher, or homeschooler you will love these ant activity ideas!

The Lifecycle of Ants for KidsThe Lifecycle of Ants for Kids

Ant activities for preschoolers

Kids will have fun learning about the ant life cycle with these hands-on manipulatives for kids learning about bugs. With my older kids we  talked about the life cycle of an ant with these free ant life cycle printables

Ant Hill Craft for Preschoolersclose up of ant hill illustration for kids

Ant activities

We learned about an ant’s life cycle in the book Ant Cities and then the kids got to interact with the different stages with the Ant Life Cycle Stages. It really helped them to visualize & understand the stages. We put them in order and then Tinker Bell (almost 2) got to play with them.

Indoor Ant Farm - Exploring habitats with kidsIndoor Ant Farm - Exploring habitats with kids

Ant activities for kindergarten

We put ants in our ant farm and observed them building tunnels – so cool!

We drew an ant hill and the tunnels inside. Then we made fingerprint ants going up the hill and inside the ant. we added ants in the different lifecycle stages, the larger queen ant, and labeled them. (My kids tell me this was their favorite part).

Simple Spoon Ant Craft for Kids

painting  our ant craft

Ant Craft Preschool

We made spoon ants by painting spoons black and then wrapping pipe cleaners around the spoons to make legs & antennae. We added some googly eyes and WHALA – we have our own, super cute ANTS!

Science Experiment for Kids - How does an Ant Walk

Ant science

How Do Ants Walk for Kids

Learn how ants walk with this simple ant lesson. Put 6 legs (toothpicks) in Play Dough to see how ants balance. Then we tried pulling out different toothpicks until we found the maximum number of toothpicks we could pull out and have the ant still balance. You can pull out 3 toothpicks (the middle on one side along with the front & back on the other row). That is how an ant balances when they walk. They pull up those legs, balance, move forward, and repeat on the opposite legs.

Ants on a Log Snack for Kids

Ant activities for toddlers

We had the classic Ants on a Log (with a twist). I didn’t have any raisins on hand so I used some mini chocolate chips we had laying around – YUM!

Ant Fieldtrip for KidsAnt Fieldtrip for Kids

Ant Fieldtrip

Earlier (in one of our many travels this year) we got a chance to see GIANT Bugs at a zoo. There were GIANT bugs, information, a HUGE ant farm, chances to interact with actual bugs, and even a chance to eat bugs! Yep, the kids ate a bug – they said it tasted like cereal!

NOTE: If you live in or near St. Paul, Minnesota make sure you pop over the the Children’s Museum so your kids can crawl inside an HUGE ant hill replica. It is amazingly FUN! New Orleands has an amazing Insect museum too.

Ants Movie Night for Kids – Disney’s A Bug’s Life

And we finished up our unit by watching Disney’s  A Bug’s Life movie. Such a fun movie! This was actually at our local park district and included interacting with actual bugs during intermission!

 

ladybug alphabet activity Counting bugs coloring book Make practicing sights words FUN with this cute Bug Sight Words Game for preschool, pre k, kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade students to practice common dolche words.   Practice initial blends with these fun, engaging blends worksheets where children will color by blend. This blending sounds actities is fun for kindergarten, first grade, and 2nd graders.  The super cute, happy bug worksheets make this insect activity for kids loads of fun! Simply print pdf file with blending sounds worksheets and you are ready for this fun blends activity.

Insect activities for preschoolers

If are looking for more bug activities for preschoolers, toddlers, and kindergartners – including lots of free insect printables, you will love these FREE resources:

FREE Insect Telling Time Puzzles ladybug addition math game free printable insect worksheets for letter A-Z

Bug Printables

Kids will be excited to practice math with a fun bug theme twist! These preschool math worksheets are filled with cute bugs to help preschoolers, toddlers, and kindergartners practice numbers, counting, shapes, colors, shape discrimination, missing numbers adding 2, and more. Add these pre-k math worksheets to your spring theme or as summer learning to avoid the summer learning loss. Simply print pdf file with bug worksheets for preschoolers and you are ready to play and learn! Bug counting to 30 worksheets i spy bugs printable Kids are naturally fascinated by creepy crawly bugs! Insects are so unqique with their many legs, antenae, ability to fly, and unique body make-up. Help kids learn about the fascinating world of insects for kids with these super cute, free insect printables. Toddler, preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten, first grade, 2nd grade, and 3rd graders will have fun learning as they colour these insect colroing pages.  Simply print bug coloring pages with more than fourteen different insects for children to read, color, and learn.

Insect Printables for Kids

Beth Gorden

Beth Gorden is the creative multi-tasking creator of 123 Homeschool 4 Me. As a busy homeschooling mother of six, she strives to create hands-on learning activities and worksheets that kids will love to make learning FUN! With over 20 years educating children, she has created over 1 million pages of printables to help teach kids alphabet, math, science, English grammar, history, and so much more! Beth is also the creator of 2 additional sites with even more educational activities and FREE printables – www.kindergartenworksheetsandgames.com and www.preschoolplayandlearn.com. Beth studied at the University of Northwestern where she got a double major to make her effective at teaching children while making education FUN!

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