How an Ant Farm Can Help Teach Life Lessons in the Classroom

I am usually trying to get rid of pesky ants. But, this past school year I actually paid money and willingly set up housekeeping for the creatures. They became residents of the science center in my first grade classroom. After posting a warning sign (We bite!), I encouraged the students to observe our new neighbors whenever there was free time and be ready to share what they noticed about the insects.

Most classroom time in school is devoted to structured, lesson-planned objectives. My first graders responded with excitement to the idea that they could actually just sit and watch ants, even if it was for only a few minutes a day. Their observations were very enlightening.

"The ants are always busy."

You can imagine how I incorporated that observation into our daily class time! Now all I had to say was, "Don't waste your time. Look at the ants--they always find something productive to do!"

"It looks like each one has a job to do."

This comment led to some research in the library and on the Internet. We discovered that individual ants do have specific jobs in order to keep the colony working efficiently. Some are the scouts who make "announcements" about intruders or a food arrival. Others are the workers who make places for the food storage and the nursery. And there is the queen who inspired envy since all she seemed to do was lay eggs and get served by the workers. As my students observed the ants, they each realized the importance of doing his or her job in order to keep our classroom running smoothly.

"They don't live very long."

I'm not sure whether or not we contributed to the abbreviated life span of our insect friends, but we went through two colonies in nine months. We tried to blame the queen for not increasing the population. According to one first grader, "The queen just doesn't get pregnant enough!" Our Christian school classroom became the place for a discussion of how brief life really is. I don't know if this lesson took hold in the hearts of little people for whom an hour seems like an eternity, but hopefully it motivated them to live each day to the fullest.

Little did I know when we adopted our colonies of ants that they would teach us much more than how insects survive on our planet...