This is an activity that's great for preschoolers to get them thinking about science!

Materials: Styrofoam balls and eggs, pipe cleaners, scissors, glue, the eyes of your choice from your local craft store, and the attached drawing depicting the anatomy of an ant.

Kids love insects. Well, some kids love some insects. My daughter is fascinated by ants, so we decided to turn her interest into a science lesson.

My daughter will spend hours on the driveway in the summer looking at ants. But she knows she does not like spiders! How does she know the difference? I think the extra legs are her biggest visual cue.

We decided to teach her about insect anatomy. Styrofoam balls and ovals, pipe cleaners, and eyes from our local craft store were the only supplies we needed. I printed out the following diagram, and we reviewed the parts of an insect before starting.

Questions you might ask you child:

• how many legs does an insect have?
• what is the difference between an ant and a spider?
• what are the body parts of the ant? Can you label the head, thorax, abdomen, legs, antennae?

Then we set off to make our model. We made sure all the legs were attached to the thorax, and we even managed to find a realistic looking abdomen. Here are our results:

The eyes make the ant a little anthropomorphic. You can adjust the eyes to suit you personal sense of scientific accuracy. Perhaps we'll study compound eyes as another experiment.

All in all this is pretty impressive for a pre-schooler. There's no time like the present to start your kids' science education.

Note: You can download a full sized version of the Anatomy of an Ant drawing for your child to fill in as a part of this experiment here.