Hey I' m already looking into next years curriculum and science projects. My kids are going into 2nd and 4th grade. i decided that i want to do an ant farm this year. Have any of you ever done them and do you have any ideas what kid of things we can watch for, chart, observe ect? any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks in advance Karma
We have never done one... but have one sitting here waiting for me to send away for our ants. Right now we are raising sea monkeys
We have not done one yet, but we are going to this year. I am looking into getting one of these.http://www.antfarmcentral.com/gelantfarms.html
I did one with the green gell which acts as ant food and water so there is nothing to do for them except watch them. Here's some problems with it...we had to send for the ants twice, becuase they came from California and most of them died during the week long trip in the mail. The other this is the gell molded; the instructions tell you to remove dead ants and to take out spots of mold when you see it. I didn't read that part and by the time I realized what that white stuff was, it was too late. Oh, and the ants only live for three months tops. You only get worker ants -- no queen because of laws about transporting non-native species to other states. The positives is that we observed some interesting things. 1 -- the ants seemed to have a period of rest when most of them were still as if they were asleep. 2. All dead ants were carried to a special chamber. At first when we dumped them into the habitat, there were a lot of dead ones. We were going to pick them out, but the live ants started carrying them around. They seemed to have trouble agreeing on where they should be placed, but eventually, they agreed on one spot. Then they tunneled and made a chamber to which they moved all the dead ants. We'd just heard a story on NPR about how ants put off a smell when they are dead so that the live ones know that it is dead. A scientist recreated that smell and put a drop of it on a live ant. That poor ant was picked up by every ant it passed and tossed on the dead pile. It kept trying to get up and go on its way, but despite its protest, the other just knew it was dead. Finally, it rubbed the smell off and came back to the world of the living.
I have a book that has science fair projects in it and it gives very detailed instructions on how to make your own antfarm with a jar and how and where to find the ants for in it, and how to make sure you have a queen I can hunt up the book if anyone is interested. I dont' think that one got packed away for a later date. Alice thanks for the warning on the gel, I think that is what ours is, will have to pull it out to look.
Be careful if you do this. I have a friend whose child accidentally broke then ant container and they had ants all through their house. They eventually had to have an exterminator come in. What a mess!
We put together ant farms every year just for the fun of it! LOL We love watching the ants make holes. We usually use an enormous jar but have used an aquarium. Then we cover it with black paper. Everytime we remove the paper, their are new tunnels.
