Allowing children to keep ants can be fun for everyone and can spark your kids' interest in science. Kids will love feeding the ants and observing their activities.
Make your own 'ant farm'
What You'll Need:
- Glass jam jar
- Scissors
- Stapler
- Water
- Sand
- Spoon
- Pie pan
- Small block of wood
- Cheesecloth
- Rubber band
- Ants
- Bits of bread
Instructions:
Step 1: Clean and dry a glass jam jar.
Step 2: Measure the jar from the base to just below the shoulder and cut a long strip of cardboard that wide.
Step 3: Bend the strip of cardboard into a cylinder the same size as the mouth of the jar. Staple the ends together and put the cylinder into the jar.
Step 4: Add water to sand until it is just barely moist. Spoon the sand into the space between the cylinder and the jar.
Step 5: Set a block of wood in the middle of a pie pan and place the jar on top of it. Fill the pan with water. This forms a moat that will foil any ants that try to escape.
Step 6: Cover the top of the jar with several layers of cheesecloth held in place with a rubber band.
Step 7: Catch ants outdoors and put them on top of the sand of your ant farm. You should only put in ants from the same colony, so try to catch all of your ants around the same location.
Keep in mind that an ant colony cannot reproduce without a queen (who lives underground and is hard to catch), so your ants are probably worker ants. Often the ants you find on the surface are the foragers and the more elderly memembers of the colony. They will naturaly die of old age in a matter of weeks or months. You can try feeding them some sugar disolved in water from time to time, provided on a coin or flat stone.
Tags: Keeping Ants
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