Living Root Garden School • Creatures Great & Small • Name: ______________________
🔍 The Case
The case of the vanishing crumbs — a crumb dropped on the path is gone in minutes, carried off by a marching line of ants. Who sent for it?
Follow the line with your eyes: one ant finds food, then walks home laying down a smell trail, and other ants follow it — each one adding more smell as they go. That smell trail is how a whole line of ants finds one crumb.
Look for the workers — almost every ant you meet is a worker, and workers are all female. Watch one haul a crumb bigger than herself: a worker can carry many times her own body weight, and for her, that is just Tuesday.
Hunt where ants march: along cracks in the sidewalk, the edges of the lawn, and the bottom of walls — a dark moving line that leads from food to a tiny hole in the ground.
Rule out the lookalikes: a reddish dome-shaped dirt mound is a fire ant mound — fire ants sting, so admire it from far away and tell a grown-up, never poke it. A lone ant wandering by itself is a scout, not a trail — wait for the line to form.
Ask: Three crumbs, three different foods — which one will the ants carry home first? Write your guess before you put the crumbs down.
Try: Set out three tiny piles of different foods a hand-span apart, then sit and watch for fifteen minutes. Count the ants at each pile and write down which pile gets the longest line.
Stretch (Teens & Growers ready for more): Run the crumb test three times at different times of day — morning, midday, and evening. Do the ants pick the same winner every time, or does the favorite change with the hour?
Tell: Fill in the log below — which crumb won, how fast the line grew — then finish this sentence in words or a labeled drawing: “The ___ crumb won because ___.”
Date
What I saw
What surprised me
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
🛠️ Build It
Draw an ant's-eye view of the crumb test — three crumbs, one trail, and the winner being carried home.
🗣️ Be the Teacher
Show someone an ant trail and tell them how the ants found the food — in your own words, no reading off the packet.
🏅 I can…
☐ I can follow an ant trail and read its smell map.
Portfolio check
☐ Guide read
☐ Case solved
☐ Ask, Try, Tell done
☐ Build It filed: Trail map + crumb test results
☐ Taught someone
☐ Badge earned: I can follow an ant trail and read its smell map.
Living Root Garden School • livingrootgarden.com/homeschool/ • Free — print as many copies as you like. File this sheet with your portfolio log. Sprouts do the Read, the Case, and Build It; Growers try the Ask, Try, Tell stretch when ready; Teens do the whole packet — including teaching it back.