A is for… Anteating Robot!

We had somewhat of ant themed day yesterday... and we focused on the letter A.

We started off with some letter A tracing. We got these cute pages at Confessions of a Homeschooler. We traced the letters with our fingers first...

then we used our Do-A-Dot markers to make the As.

Not bad for his first time trying to dot the letters.

Next we did Ant (little a, big A) puzzles while we talked about the letter A. We printed the ants out here, and then mounted them to cardstock and cut them up.

He definitely needed some prompting to connect the ants in the way I wanted him to (he liked to just put the ant pieces on top of one another, which still accomplished the goal). While we did these puzzles we talked about other words that started with A and we talked about the colors of each ant.

The last thing we made was an Anteating Robot (continuing with the theme of the day)!

Materials Needed: foil, tape, cardstock, scissors, markers, cardboard tube, pasta box with a view hole (we didn't end up using the paint after all).

Directions:
1. Wrap the box up in foil... leaving the view window open. It should stay on its own, but if it doesn't, stick some tape on it.


2. Cut the cardboard into two equal pieces.

3. Make an X on both sides of the box with scissors. Pull the hole open so that it snugly fits the cardboard tube.

4. Have your little one help you stick the arms on the robot (push the tube through the hole and secure with tape).

5. Shape some extra foil to make an antennae (or whatever else you want). Use tape to secure it.

6. Add eyes, teeth, and anything else your child wants to add. My little guy wanted a one-eyed anteating robot, so I had to comply.

7. The last thing we did was cut up one of our ant puzzles so that the robot could eat the ant. We stuck the ant onto the robot's mouth so it looked like it was eating it.

Presenting, our Anteating Robot!

The robot joined us for ant hunting in the backyard...

and even went with us on a walk to the park to find our favorite ant hiding spots.

You can find another fun robot craft here.

This book by Jon Scieszka and David Shannon looks like a fun one to check out at the library and continue our robot fun.

Have fun creating! We sure did!