Ants!

Take a lesson from the ants ... Learn from their ways and be wise! For though they have no king to make them work,  yet they labor hard all summer, gathering food for the winter. Proverbs 6 v 6-8

Luke received an ant world kit at Christmas so when the nature study topic for the outdoor hour challenge was ants we thought it would be a good time to get it set up. Easier said than done! We found some ants under a rock at the front of our house and tried to entice them with some honey into a container but they were having none of it.

Next Paul and Luke invented an ant sucking tube which proved slightly better at catching them!

Eventually we managed to get almost 20 ants to make their home in the ant world.

After  nearly 2 weeks you can see where they have made lots of tunnels and they are very busy scurrying around up and down.

We looked in our Handbook of nature study and discovered some interesting facts:

• ants live in colonies with one queen
• they work together to care for the young ants and the nest
• ants can carry 50 times there own body weight!
• they stroke/pat aphids to encourage them to exude honeydew which the ant loves to eat.
• they will farm the aphids to ensure a supply of this honeydew (carrying them away from hazards and caring for their young too)
• ants will battle over territory or for the purpose of making slaves (Ben was very interested in the battle tactics of the ants!)
• the ants eyes are small as she makes most use of her antennae to give her information about her surroundings such as detecting the odour of her own nest and recognising  sister ants.

Wow what amazing creatures they are

Here are the boys nature study pages: