Truman's Aunt Farm

As well as finishing up previously scheduled art projects, we are also working our way through the books I chose to do Five In A Row style at the beginning of last year. (You'll remember that there was a mass revolt of small people who wanted to do "real" work instead.) I had the books and the plans and supplies, so it seemed a shame to waste them all. People are much more amenable to the whole idea if it is just a fun activity as opposed to Work.



This week I got out Truman's Aunt Farm by Jama Kim Rattigan. It is a very cute book that everyone enjoyed. The general gist of the story is that Truman is sent a certificate for an ant farm by an aunt. Instead of ants arriving, aunts start arriving. He takes care of them and eventually finds them all good homes. There is a continual play on the ant/aunt homonym.

Our first activity was to sort out this ant/aunt difference. (In some parts of the country, I realize that this isn't an issue as the words are pronounced differently, but here in the Midwest, they sound exactly the same.) So I made some cards.


We talked about the difference in the words and then held up the appropriate card for which ever word was used in the story.

The next day, I had a surprise for everyone.


How can you read a book about an ant farm (or even and aunt farm) and not have a real ant farm? We need to order the ants still (just like Truman), but everyone is very excited to watch the ants in action.

Finally, we made a craft. Guess what it was... that's right, we made ants.




Well, sort of.

Some people made ants.

By G.


By L. (She decided it was an army ant.)


By K.


Other people felt limited by ants...


D. made a cyclops butterfly.




TM made a... um.... well, he says it is a sewer bug.



H., inspired by D. and never one to turn down a chance to do anything with butterflies, also made a butterfly.



Now we just need our real ants to come.

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