A is for Apple but A is also for Ant. For my first preschool lesson this year, I chose to teach my students about ants. It was fun!

A is for Ant parts of an ant with labels

As we started our day, we saw live ants building tunnels in their artificial ant hill. It was fascinating to see how ants work together as a team. My class also made our own ants out of egg cartons and pipe cleaners. (ant craft) We played an ant race game and we read ant books, too ! It was a day of preschool science, reading and fun!

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Lesson Ideas

Read Ant Books
Play Ant Race Game
Do an Ant Craft
Look at a Live Ant Hill

Toy Ants!

Teach your children about ant physiology (pictured above), community, environment, work habits of ants.

And you can show them a video about ants, too. [below]

List of Books about Ants

Ant Books
The Magic Schoolbus Gets Ants In Its Pants
The Ants Go Marching (classic book with holes)
The Ant and the Grasshopper (an interactive book)
The Ant and the Grasshopper (hard cover)

Make your own ANT – Egg Carton Ant Craft for Kids

Letter A is for Ant is a fun way to start #preschool. It introduces the alphabet to your child and teaches #science with #crafts, too! #kindergarten Click To Tweet

Are you a homeschooling parent or preschool teacher? What other ideas for the letter A do you use?

Enjoy!

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

Pipe cleaners

Googly Eyes

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!