ant house: cool down series

My little guy is very tired and therefore wired, sensitive, needy and impatient when he gets off the bus after a full day of school. It’s only been one week of school so far. We’ve adjusted his bedtime, we offer super healthy choices for meals and snacks, we give him lots of love and try our best to be patient…
and we also realize he needs a cool down time, unstructured, open-ended, free time.
This week, HappyLittleMesses will be focused on some simple, process and child driven activities that might help kids unwind, decompress and settle down. There will also be a new category called, “after school cool down.”

First up in this series: Ant House

We leave a little piece of corn muffin on the driveway. An hour later we return to find a line of ants taking it away, crumb by crumb. We follow the line of ants and find the hole in the pavement where they must reside.

After playing bug bingo at nature camp, Little J and K get a prize of some little plastic ants. We think it’s a great idea to build them a little habitat. With leftover snack, we leave a trail of crumbs and line up the plastic marching ants.

The boys gather small twigs and build a square around the food crumbs. I teach them how to build upwards, alternating sticks, like you would in the game Jenga. Little J covers the building with a flat twig roof.