We suggest students work in pairs. Homeschool students can work on their own.

Creepy Crawly Caution

The observations and experiments in this activity are focused on termites. We think they’re small and cute, but if you have students who are particularly sensitive to seeing any type of creepy crawly, you may want to preview the lesson prior to presenting it to your class.

K-2 Versus 3-5 Activity

There are three experiments for 3-5 students (Shape, Color, and Writing Tool) and two experiments for K-2 students (Shape and Writing Tool). If you’d like to extend the activity to include the Color Experiment for K-2, we have an additional worksheet so students can record their results. You can find the activity steps for this extension here.

Teacher Background

If you are curious, the termites only follow ink from Bic brand pens because a chemical in the pen ink is similar to a scent that termites recognize. Termites don’t have eyes and rely on their sense of smell to know where to go! If you and your students are interested, you can even order termites online and bring them into your classroom for more hands-on experiments!