Ant Tracking

It is a gloomy, overcast day outside—perfect for ant tracking!

I can't remember where, but I read about ant tracking some time ago & thought it'd be a fun thing for the girls to do this summer. We grabbed several different colors of acrylic paint, some tweezers, tiny paint brushes, & a magnifying glass. 

We sprinkled bread crumbs near the anthills. Once we spied an ant trying to carry his meal away, we found it easiest to pick up the food with the tweezers & paint the ant this way. A magnifying glass will help to see better. If one person holds the tweezers while the second person paints + holds the magnifying glass, it works great. Zoey helped me film this 6-second Vine showing how we painted the ants. In fact, I ended up using a teeny tiny pine needle instead of a paint brush, which worked great!

On some ants we just painted the bums, on other ants we dotted the bum + the head. Once you've painted several ants, grab your magnifying glass & start observing! Just be careful not to burn the little guys---which is why a gloomy day works best.

The girls marked the anthills with sidewalk chalk. This is "my zone" & that is "your zone". 

I could hear Pazely squeal: "Hey Zoey! My ant just went to your ants house!"

And then I could hear Zoey say, "Well, it's still my ant. It's not your ant."

*oh brother*

This is actually a real true thing that researchers do. 

Watch THIS cool video to check it out. 

It's really quite neat!

♥