Focused learning and cooperative play are the hallmarks of small group activities.

The preschool classroom is the perfect place to learn the give and take of working together with other students. When paired with engaging projects, cooperative learning stimulates cognitive growth and promotes prosocial behavior.

For this activity, we used a few materials to create an ant colony. Before starting, we talked about what an any colony was. We then read the book Ant Cities, by Arthur Dorros.

In this book, we learned that ants create networks of tunnels. These tunnels enable them to live  and support their colony.

Using boxes, toy ants, and cardboard tubes, we created the tunnels we saw in the book. With our friends, we pretended to be “worker ants”, working together to create a home!