Kids seem to love bugs or hate them... but either way, they are pretty curious about them. This week my son is at camp all day (9am-3pm), so my daughter and I have a lot of time to play and create together while the baby is napping!
Since we are participating in Bug Week for the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp, we decided to share a simple ant puppet and snack with you today! Our next session of camp is starting soon! Go HERE to sign up.
We started off our day reading several of our favorite bug books. Afterwards, my daughter was adamant that we do an ant project, so we grabbed our materials and started assembling an ant puppet!
Easy Ant Puppet
Materials Needed:
black paper, scissors, googly eyes, glue, paint stir stick (we get these from Home Depot/Lowes)
Directions:
First I cut out three ovals for ant body parts and she counted the ovals. 1-2-3. Then I cut two antennae and she counted them. Then I cut out six legs and she counted them.
After that we sang our Ant body part song to the tune of "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes."
Head, thorax, abdomen
Abdomen, abdomen
Head, thorax, abdomen
Six legs, two antennae!
Next we glued the body parts onto the paint stir stick, added googly eyes, and let everything dry before we played with it!
While we let our ant puppet dry, we made an Ant snack!
Healthy Ant Snack
Materials Needed:
carrot sticks, knife, apple, chow mein, mini chocolate chips, and peanut butter or sun butter
Directions:
Cut the apple and carrot into slices so that you have three apple body part chunks and six thin ant legs.
Spread peanut butter on your plate and then stick the three ant body parts and six ant legs onto the peanut butter.
Stick two antennae on with peanut butter along with two eyes... and then EAT!
Book Suggestions:
For ant themed books you could read Two Bad Ants
by Chris Van Allsburg along with these activities or check out The Life and Times of the Ant
by Charles Micucci. Both of these books are for elementary aged kids, but we have them in our house and we love to read through them with my toddler because they have great pictures. Often I will make up my own words or summarize the story or text while still using the pictures.
Some other fun ant (and bug) crafts and activities include...
Spoon Ants via 123 Homeschool for Me
Bugs on the Sticky Table via Teach Preschool
The Ant Experiment via Wildlife Fun 4 Kids
Ants on a log snack via Teach Love Grow
Egg Carton Ant via No Time For Flashcards
Today our VBC featured activity is over at Rainy Day Mum. You can find the full tutorial for this very busy spider web here...
If you haven't signed up for our Virtual Book Club Summer Camp weekly email planner, you can click here to sign up. Every week of camp you'll receive themed book lists, activity ideas, materials lists, and some other great info to make your summer awesome.
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