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Bugs + Crawly Things: Preschool Ant Activities

This month we’ve been learning about Bugs & Crawly Things, including ants. Ants are familiar and interesting little creatures. They are one of the more insects here and certainly capture any child’s attention. Studying ants through books, art, play dough, and music has been fun! Check out the following Preschool Ant Activities. Also, see my Bugs in the Grass Spring Play Bin and Painting Ladybug Spots.

Bugs + Crawly Things: Ants

What work do you think an ant does? Ants are very busy! We talked about what ants do – build homes, gather food, and carry things. We enjoyed watching ant videos on YouTube. It’s always good when children can see the real thing but I didn’t expect to have any to observe in our yard. Once I started looking, I noticed we had some in the backyard and in the crack between the garage and the driveway. One morning we even had a mass on the sidewalk.

Ants in driveway

ant daily topic poster

We looked at the daily topic poster and talked about the parts of ant – head, thorax, and abdomen.

Preschool Ant Activities

We found this wonderful book about bugs. It has so real, close-up photos and little facts about different kinds of ants.

Ant Hill Art

The ant hill art was inspired by this photo:

ant poster

Using paper, paint, sand, glue, a paper cone and stickers the kids made ant hills.preschool ant art

Mixing paint and sand makes a neat texture.

Everyone was so busy creating and using their materials in different ways.

ant hill preschool art

The glue with sand sprinkled on it looks like ant trails.preschool ant art

Squeezing glue and sprinkling sand are both good processes for little hands.

glue and sand

Experimenting with liquid watercolors and sand.

liquid watercolors and sand

I was so impressed with the art my group created. For ant hills, I think they turned out beautiful.

Bugs + Crawly Things: Ants
Bugs + Crawly Things: Ants

Little ants drawn at the top, on the right:

Bugs + Crawly Things: Ants
Bugs + Crawly Things: Ants
Bugs + Crawly Things: Ants

Play Dough Ant Hills

Using play dough and black beans, we made ant hills.

play dough ant hills

Play dough is always fun and an important sensory and fine motor activity. Grasping, pushing and picking the bean “ants” out of the play dough, kept them busy.

play dough ant hills

This ant hill was quite neat. The ants are lined up around the hill.

Play dough ant hills with black beans

Ant Hill Musical Shakers

Using black paint, we made fingerprint ants on cups.

painting ant hills

After the paint dried, we put beans in the cup and I hot glued the lid on. They make nice loud music when shaken! They do look like little ant hills. How fun!

ant hill musical shakers

More Bug Activities

Kids Nature Activities and Bug Facts-Little Sprouts Learning

Monday 18th of April 2022

[…] Ants are familiar and interesting little creatures. They are one of the more insects here and certainly capture any child’s attention. Studying ants through books, art, play dough, and music is fun! Check out the following Preschool Ant Activities. […]