One Hundred Hungry Ants
Author: Elinor J. Pinczes
Illustrator: Bonnie Mackain
Recommended Grade Levels: K-4

NCTM Standards: Number and Operations, Algebra, Measurement

Summary:
As the title suggests the story begins with one hundred hungry ants eagerly planning on marching over to a picnic to devour the food before it is gone. At first, the ants march one after another in a long line of one hundred. However, a smart little ant begins to think of different ways the ants could march that would help them arrive at the picnic much more quickly. Throughout the book the ants change formation from one line with one hundred ants to two lines with fifty ants and eventually down to ten lines with ten ants. Unfortunately, the ants take so much time changing their formation (because they did not plan ahead) that by the time they arrive at the picnic all the food has been eaten!

Suggestions for Using this Book with Students:
The teacher could begin by reading the story to the students. Depending upon the grade level the teacher could have a wide variety of activities planned. With younger students the teacher could first discuss and document ideas students may have regarding why the ants kept changing their marching patterns. Afterwards, the teacher could line the students up one after the other (like in the beginning of the story) and time how long it takes for the whole class to reach the cafeteria. The teacher could continue to break down the class into more lines with fewer students in each line and document the time each trip to the cafeteria takes. This would enable students to see first-hand that even with more groups of students the shorter each line of students is then the quicker the students will arrive at the cafeteria.After this activity the teacher could go back to the list the students created before the activity and discuss any new ideas the students have regarding the usefulness for both the students and the ants to march in shorter lines. The marching activity would also be a great opportunity to create a graph that could contain both the time it took for each formation of students to arrive at the cafeteria and also the length of each formation's line. The teacher could then use this book to also talk about multiplication and division. With older students this book would be an especially useful starting point when discussing factoring, in particular, because it provides an in-context example of the applicability of factoring.