STEAM with
Ms. Amy
🐜 🐞 April 27: STEAM: Insects 🦋 🐜
What makes an insect an insect?
Are ants insects? In this experiment, you will observe ants gathering food. What do the ants look like? How many legs do they have? Do they have antennas? Are they insects?
For more ant facts: Ant Guide
What food did the ants like the most? What did they do with the food? Do the ants fight or are they working together? What happens if you move the food to a new spot? What happens if you block their path with something?
Ants leave trails of chemicals called pheromones that alert other members of the colony that there is food on the path. This is why each member of the colony continuously walks the same route to the food and back to their nest.
Ant Farm
Watch this fun video on how to make your own ant farm:
Family Ant Farm Creation Demonstration
Make an ant farm, collect no more than 20 ants and observe them make their tunnels. Be sure to feed your ants and release them when you are done observing them! What have the ants done in the jar after a few days? Can you observe them getting food? What do they do with the food?
Ants live in colonies. There are three kinds of ants in a colony: The queen, the female workers and males. The queen and the males have wings, while the workers don’t have wings. The queen is the only ant that can lay eggs. The male ant’s job is to mate with future queen ants and they do not live very long afterwards. Ant colonies also have soldier ants that protect the queen, defend the colony, gather food, and attack enemy colonies. Did you know an ant can lift 20 times its own body weight? If an 8 year old was as strong as an ant, she would be able to pick up a car!
Hungry Caterpillar
Gather materials for a caterpillar. You could use several applesauce pouch lids, googly eyes and pipe cleaners. Make your caterpillar using the materials. How could you attach the googly eyes and antenna? How long is your caterpillar? What if you built it vertically. Use a ruler to measure your caterpillars. Which one is bigger? How could you make them taller?
Butterfly Feeder
Have you ever wondered how butterflies eat? Watch the video to see what body part they use:
Butterflies use their proboscis to suck nectar from flowers or tree sap. Other butterflies may drink the liquid from decaying fruit. Did you know butterflies “taste” with their front feet?
Can you make a feeder for butterflies in your yard?
Make a Butterfly Feeder | Sugar Water for Butterflies Project
Butterfly Wings
How do butterfly wings work? Do they flap them up and down like a bird? How do they avoid predators? Watch this video to find out. https://youtu.be/zfpXW3xJXmI
Butterfly wings are huge! This helps them to turn faster to avoid predators and they make a figure 8 pattern with their wings instead of going up and down.
For this activity you will need light weight paper, like tissue paper and a balloon.
What happens to a balloon if you rub it on your head? What happens to tissue paper butterfly wings when you fly it to close to the “flower” - balloon? What happens when you move the balloon away? What happened to the balloon when you rubbed it on your head? The balloon rubbing on your head caused static electricity. Static electricity occurs when materials rub together. One material becomes negatively charged and one is positively charged. What caused your butterfly wings to move? When we rubbed the balloon onto our hair, electrons were lost from our hair and gained by the balloon giving it a static charge. When the negatively charged balloon gets close to the positively charged tissue paper, they are attracted to each other and the pull of attraction is so great that the tissue paper moves toward the balloon.
https://iheartcraftythings.com/static-electricity-butterfly-experiment.html
Bee Pollination
Why do we need bees to pollinate the flowers? Watch this video to find out. Bees Pollinate
Pollination is needed for plants to reproduce. Many plants depend on bees or other insects as pollinators. When a bee collects nectar and pollen from the flower of a plant, some pollen sticks to the hairs of its body from the stamens—the male reproductive organ of the flower.
When she visits the next flower, some of this pollen is rubbed off onto the tip of the pistil—the female reproductive organ of the flower. When this happens, fertilization is possible, and a fruit carrying seeds can develop. In this activity, can you be the pollinator - the bee and gather nectar and pollen from a plant?
Pollination Activity, an extension to this activity, you could make more flowers and visit each flower. What happened to your fingers when you picked up the candy from the jar? Did the pollen move to another plant? The pollen has transferred to the pistil of the plant, making fertilization possible.
Ladybug Home
Why are ladybugs important if you have a garden? They eat the pests like aphids that eat our garden plants. Could you make a ladybug habitat for your ladybugs?
Go on an aphid hunt if you have some plants outside. Did you find any aphids? If so, hang your ladybug home near the aphids. After your habitat has been outside for a few days, do you have any ladybugs? If so, what do they seem to like the best about the habitat?
Symmetrical Insects
We learned this week in the Dolphin class that butterflies are symmetrical, but did you know that other insects are symmetrical as well? Watch this video for instructions on how to make your own insect. Have fun!
Painting Insects Using Symmetry
Did you make sure your insect had 6 legs? Did it have a head, thorax and abdomen? What kind of eyes and antennae did you put on it? Share your insect paintings with Ms. Laurel. I’m excited to see what you made!
Insect Snacks
Can you make a butterfly out of grapes, oranges and pretzels? How about some ants on a log or some ladybugs with strawberries and blueberries? I wonder how many insects you can make before you eat them up!
The Cutest Bug Theme Healthy Snacks
