Easy-Peasy DIY Ant Crafts

I almost went with the standard, and admittedly cute, egg carton ant with pipecleaner legs and antennae craft for our crawling insect theme story time, but I decide to take inspiration from my awesome ant farm and have the children create simple paper ant mazes, and while we were at it, stamp some ants on their pants!

Anthill Maze

Supplies: paper (copy paper works best, but construction paper is fine), two markers of the same size, tape, a paper clip, a magnet, a craft stick (or a fridge magnet in lieu of a small magnet and craft stick) glue, and a picture of an ant (clip art or hand-drawn)

1. Tape the markers together



2. Pressing down with both markers, draw a "maze" on the paper- squiggles, straight lines, loop-de-loops...it's up to you!



3. Glue the small magnet to one end of a craft stick- or just use a fridge magnet. Tape a paper clip to the back of your ant picture. Thread the tape through one loop of the paperclip so the other loop of metal is left uncovered.



4. Have a buddy hold the paper at the edges with both hands. Lay the ant picture at the "start" of your maze and hold the magnet under the paper directly underneath the ant- then slowly move the magnet and slide your ant through the maze!



Change the picture and you have a whole new adventure- a mouse looking for cheese, a race car on a track, a groundhog or prairie dog tunneling....the possibilities are endless!

Ants in My Pants
Supplies: paper, scissors, cotton swabs, tape, and an ink pad

1. Cut your paper to resemble a pair of pants. Tape three cotton swabs together so the tips line up- and create the three body parts of an ant (head, thorax, abdomen) . To get the most use out of this you can then cut the sticks in half so you have two "ants" from each grouping.



2. Dab the cotton swab bundle onto the ink pad, then stamp onto the paper pants. You may need to practice a bit to get a solid ant form- sometimes kind of tilting the swabs from side to side while on the paper helps to round out the shape. Keep stamping until you think you have enough ants in your pants!