Two Bad Ants, But Two Great Children's Books!

We are fully immersed in our insect study and exploring many wonderful books both non-fiction and fiction. 

We just read a great book, Two Bad Ants by Chris Van  Allsburg.  Chris takes the reader on an adventure from the perspective of the ants.  The children had a lot of fun deciphering the items referred to by the ants such as the hole in the wall that made them feel funny, being an electrical outlet that they had crawled into or the hot brown bitter liquid being coffee.  It was a long story, but my four year olds were riveted.

 

During the book the ants collect these special crystals.  By the end of the story we had determined that they were talking about sugar.  We had to see for ourselves so we each took some sugar in our hands and really looked at it.  Then we used magnifying glasses to see the individual crystals.  This of course led to tasting-a good scientist does use all of her senses.

Another wonderful story to include in a collection about insects is Crickwing by Janell Cannon.

Again, initially I thought it would be too long, but it keeps the reader engaged with suspense.  Crickwing isn’t very nice after being the brunt of teasing himself, so this story can lead into some wonderful discussions of bullying and how to treat others.  He learns an important lesson and does well in the end.  My class was very intrigued with the army ants mentioned in the book, so we will be researching that insect next week.

Share with me your favorite insect story.