Learning the alphabet is much more exciting to preschoolers when you explore each letter using a great visual aid. “A” is for Ant is a natural starter. Ants are creepy, fascinating creatures that will capture the interest of any 3 or 4 year old. Couple your exploration with a real live ant farm, and you have a real winner.
This year I used an egg carton craft where the children were able to make their own ant.
Caution, paint does not dry nearly as fast as you may want it to. Start this craft first thing in the morning, to be completed in the afternoon. You may even want to schedule “part 2” for the following day. My class meets just once a week, so we had to get it done the same day.
Egg Carton Ant Craft
What you will need:
Cardboard egg cartons
Washable paint (black, brown, gray or red)
Paint brushes
Glue sticks
Cut egg cartons into 3 humps: head, thorax, abdomen.
Cut out the triangular edge on the side in between each egg holder-shell to better define the body parts.
Make holes for the legs. To assure that the holes are opposite each other,
use a cooking skewer to poke the holes directly through to the other side. *NOTE: I got a little smarter the second time we did this craft. Use a single HOLE PUNCH instead of a skewer. It works great!
Paint the egg carton an “ant” color. In this case, we used black.
Let it dry.
Thread a long pipe cleaner through each egg carton shell and
bend the ends to look like legs.
Using a glue stick, attach the googly eyes, and you’re done!
Cute, huh?
In addition to our egg carton ant craft, I created a fun ant counting game which I will share with you in a soon-coming post.
Be sure to check out our new Preschool Fun page, as well.
Have you taught preschoolers about ants?
What other “A” lessons have you used?
Share your ideas with us!
Enjoy!
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