Honey Bee Activities

We are into Bees and Butterflies around here 

thanks to our preschool curriculum from Mother Goose Time!

If you missed my last post on Beehive Stamping, be sure to check that out.

If you are looking for more bee fun, let me share what we did today!

First things first... grab some bee wings you bought at Dollar Tree last Halloween and put them on.

Math

Number Recognition

Using the cards MGT sent and some torn paper scraps to simulate pollen, my girl worked on her number recognition skills by moving the "pollen" aka torn paper from one flower to its matching big card flower.  She completed this in no time!  MGT suggested making it more challenging by using the number word names.  I might try that tomorrow.  On the back of all the little circles I will write the word name for the numbers 1-16.  Then I will read it to her and she will have to move the pollen to the correct flower.

Licking your finger makes the "pollen" stick to your finger thus allowing the torn paper, I mean pollen, to transfer from one flower to another.  She figured that out all by herself! Ha! 

Creativity: Invitation to Create

Nectar Painting

Using a pipette, cupcake liner, watery paint and markers, my girl created her own flowers.

We talked about how honey bees suck up nectar with their long tongues from flowers just like our pipette sucks up the watery paint!

STEAM

Sticky Paint

Loved this cool idea from MGT! Add honey or corn syrup to some paint in a small cup.  Use any painting tool to explore making marks and designs with the sticky paint.  Don't forget to taste the honey before adding to the paint!  That was my girl's favorite part!

This painting is super sticky and the honey gives the paint a really amazing shine!

LITERACY

Read Aloud: In the Trees, Honey Bees.

Our local library had a whole section on bees and butterflies...which I may or may not have checked out like 1/2 of those books....sorry library patrons!

That is how I stumbled upon this gem of a book!  

I love the simple rhyme throughout, but on each page, there is a little paragraph giving factual information about honey bees.  The pictures are stunning too!

Momma Needs A Minute?

No shame in the needing a minute game.  I have a one year old who likes to scream at me every time I set him down.  It's his favorite pastime.  I'm his favorite person.  When he's napping and I need to do school with my girl, but need a moment for myself, youTube and Cat in the Hat have been amazing! (it's also on Netflix). My girl loves this show.  I love how its short and sweet, lets me have a 10 minute break to myself, and corresponds with the learning we are already doing.  Just a trick to have up your sleeve when you need another cup of coffee, or time to prep dinner, or a minute in the potty without someone else talking to you or trying to smack the toilet paper to see how much rolls off.  We lost 1/2 a roll yesterday minutes after my son crushed a muffin on the bathmat.  I was putting said bathmat in the laundry when the roll was lost.  Ugh.... 

Cat in the Hat: Show Me the Honey

Of all our honey bee activities, my favorite had to be our book time.  Even though she's almost 5, my girl still likes to climb into my lap, place a blanket over us and have me read to her.  It'll be a sad day for sure when she decides she's too big for my lap.  

Excuse me for a minute... I seem to have something leaking out of my eyes....

Enjoy all the moments friends!

Even the crushed muffin/ toilet paper ones!

They'll be gone before we know it. 

Beehive Stamping

Spring has sprung down here in Texas!

The azaleas are putting out their yearly show and our yard is exploding with white and pink azaleas.

With the blooming of all the flowers, comes the pollen and the bees (and allergies)!

It's absolutely perfect timing to start our Bees and Butterflies Unit from Mother Goose Time, 

our preschool homeschool curriculum.

I have to admit... I despise insects- especially flying ones.  However, as I have started reading more bee books to my preschooler and actually looking at the bees around me, I am slowly trying to appreciate them more.  I especially appreciate when they don't buzz to close to me! ;)

Here are a couple of pics of the bees in our yard this week as they flew from azalea to azalea:

Bumble bees, honey bees, and carpenter bees all make their way to our yard in the spring and summer.  I can handle the bumble and honey okay, but those carpenter bees are pretty territorial of our garbage can and shed... no bueno my friends... no bueno.  I have been known to look like a maniac a time or two ducking and running for the safety of our garage.

As the bees buzzed outside, we started our Bee Basics week with MGT, starting with their home.

Although bees can have different types of homes (hives, nests, or underground), we focused on a hive as we did our first Invitation to Create for for this unit.

MGT sent us the photo, yellow paper, and bubble wrap bag.  The Inspiration photo is truly inspirational!  Avaleigh stared at it for a loooong time and pointed to the larva in the hive showing me the babies and then asking me where the queen bee was.  She's into bees already!

We only had to add paint.  Although the pic above shows yellow paint, I did add some brown into the yellow to get the honey looking color you see below.

Avaleigh did not waste any time painting.  She used her bubble wrap bag like a mitten- stamping bubble imprints all over her paper creating the cells of a hive.  When she finished that, I asked her what she wanted to use to create her bees.  She asked for black paint.

I asked what she wanted to use to stamp her bees thinking she would ask for a paintbrush.

She surprised me and said she would use her fingers.

Which, by the way, were the perfect bee creating stamp.

The thing that impressed me the most as I watched her create her hive was the way in which she manipulated her fingers to stamp.  She was really trying out different parts of her finger to see what the effect was- something I had not really seen her think of before.

Her finished hive. 

I love how her bees turned out! Some of her fingerprints actually look like the head and abdomen of a bee! I also love the variety of bee shapes she made, some circular, some thick and solid black, others with a thick outer black ring with the yellow of the paper in the center.

Yeah....I'm going to frame this one.