Ants - Inquiry

Monday

We began by watching the video the Ant and the Grasshopper - this is also our shared book for the week. We spoke about where ants live and what they do.

Then for our poetry we looked at the ants go marching one by one song/poem and my students decorated it depending on where they think an ant lives.

We then started looking closely at the ant. Students had to go and catch one and then look at it under their magnifying glass. My kids loved this it was such an exciting activity that I was able to feed heaps of vocab in. Some of the ants were dead, some half dead and some really alive. This got us talking about how their bodies moved etc.
Once they had looked at it properly they drew what they noticed.

Tuesday
For our writing on Tuesday I gave students an image of an pushing a droplet of water. My students had to decide what the ant was going to do with it and where it was taking it. They love being creative and using their imagination so it makes writing so much fun.

 In the afternoon our focus was on the lifecycle of an ant. We went over our own and the life cycle of a spider to help students start thinking about how a ant starts life. We looked at each stage of the lifecycle and discussed what we noticed was happening. I showed students a range of images so it was clear what happened at each stage. They then went on to complete their own lifecycle.

Wednesday
We went out side and looked at the different places that the ants lived. One of my reading groups had been researching bugs and they were able to offer some facts on where insects live. They shared this with the class. My students then had to go out side and look closely at where the ants lived and had to draw their home. We also looked at an image of a colony under the ground. Students were able to notice all the little parts to a nest.

Thursday
For writing I showed students the book Hey Little Ant. The storyline is a boy is talking to a ant who he wants to squash and they ant is giving him reasons not to. Students then have to decide what he should do - this was their writing task. Once finished they published them and we made the cute little pictures to match.

In the afternoon we looked at the different body parts of a ant and compared them to our spiders.

Friday
Our class was on assembly so we made masks to wear when we danced to the The Ants Go Marching song.

For the afternoon we watched the movie Ants - the kids loved it and it was a great way to end our term!!