Ants at Work

We read an informational story about the ant in class this week. The story was set up with high interest pictures and broken into small, digestible chunks. The students were quite interested in reading all the facts. Did you know that in one year ants move 32,000,000,000,000 pounds of dirt? Did you know that only the females work? Did you know that an ant can carry 5 times her weight? One of my students referenced Bug's Life and said that it was wrong since the females are the workers and the males are lazy. To finish out the time one day (actually we didn't have anything else to do) we went outside to look for ants or anthills. One of my special needs boys was so excited to find a large anthill. When he didn't see any ants, he commented that they must be out to lunch. Now we know that expression as an idiom, but he meant it literally because the females leave the hill in search of food. Next week we will need to plant some food away from the hills and investigate how the ants carry the food back to their homes. I'm sure I can find a standard to cover that!