Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Little Black Ant on Park Street

Little Black Ant on Park Street is the second book by Janet Halfmann that I've reviewed and I continue to be impressed by the quality of her work. Readers will find out many fascinating things about ants from where they live, the different jobs each ant might have, to how they use scent trails to help them find their way.

This title was quite different from any others we've read with ER previously and she was captivated by it, especially the part of about how the ants work together to take bits of a dead caterpillar back to the ant hill. Her mommy might have felt a bit squeamish while reading about their "social" stomach but that was just one of the many new things ER learned from this book.

Actually I should say it was one of many things we both learned, like how ants can stroke aphids with their antennae to get them to release a drop of liquid sugar that can then be taken back to the queen and babies. The wonderful illustrations by Kathleen Rietz help bring the story alive and over all the book is a great addition to a collection and for this bug-phobic parent a very helpful tool to introduce a new topic to my child.

A is for Ant Art Project & Snack
After reading the book, ER and I worked together on an A is for Ants project. Using a Letter A worksheet, we color and cut out the capital letter and the ant picture. Then we used an ink pad to make finger print ants with ER's thumb, middle, and pinkie fingers.

We also made Ant on a Log for snack. It's very easy to make, clean and cut celery. Add peanut butter to the celery stalk, where the indentation is, and stick raisins into the peanut butter for "ants".

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Disclaimer: Thank you to the author for arranging this book review. I received a review copy and this post relates my own personal and unbiased opinion.

6 comments:

  1. What a cute book! I love the thumbprint ants!! Very creative!!

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  2. I found one of the books from that series at the library, it was very cool.

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  3. My kids love this book and now that the weather is nice we can finally go outside and explore the ant hills.

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  4. What great activities! And Katie, I hope you're not bug-phobic anymore! Thanks for the wonderful review!

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  5. Oh wow, what a great lesson for the letter A. I hope you don't mind, but I am going to borrow this for my lil one. Are you going to post the rest of the letters or was this just a one time project? I would love to see more.

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