The Ants Go Marching One by One.....

This morning during early morning drop off Teddy Freidman and I found an Ant! We were quite excited about our new friend so we put it in a cage and put in some dirt so it could have a temporary indoor home. Unfortunately it escaped and when another early drop off friend became scared it got stepped on. So this meant that we had to have an "ant funeral." We went outside and were joined by our friends as they were arriving to school. We had a quick funeral ceremony which included a rousing edition of, "The Ants go Marching" and then decided that we had to go on an "Ant Hunt" to find more ants. We dug in the dirt but there were no ants or bugs in sight! The kids all started to ask to go into the woods to see if we would have more luck beyond the playground. We compromised and went to the area by the playground and searched for a bit there. Soon Max found a stump that was covered in ants! We looked at them and decided that was an ant colony that must live inside. We put a few of them in our container to observe and then let them out at the end of outdoor time. It was neat to see how one little ant could inspire so much create play. Because of this one little ant we had kids from multiple classes working together to grapple with nature and to examine animal behavior. By the end of the morning we had many kids who had all learned that it's important to be kind to all animals, even if they are just an itty-bitty ant.