In the Beehive

In our first week of our Bees & Butterflies theme, we’ve been learning all about bees – their homes, food, babies, work and safety – everything in the beehive.

In the Beehive Activities

Using bubble wrap we painted beehives and made paper bees. We used gold shimmery paint that the kids described as “honey”.

Using a basket of balls and a shoebox, we explored the idea of a bee nest. I cut a hole on the top of the box and a flap on one of the ends. This is a great activity for toddlers. They put a ball in the top and problem solve to take the balls in and out of the box, like bees going in and out of the nest.

This one was kind of hard to get out of the box – it was a tight but it came out!

Fill the Honeycomb Game

We played “Fill the Honeycomb”. Each player filled their flower card with bingo chips.

Each child took a turn rolling the die and then removing that many “bits of pollen” from the flowers and adding them to the honeycomb.

The goal was for everyone to work together to fill the honeycomb with “pollen”, or bingo chips.

We continued until all the food was in the honeycomb. It took a while but it was fun!

Bee Books

A couple books we read: Buzz Bumble to the Rescueand One Busy Bee.

Transfer the Nectar

Bees work hard! They are busy. Bee have two stomachs. One stomach is for eating the food and the other is for saving food to take to the nest.
Needed:

• Pipettes
• bowl of water
• ice cube trays
• food coloring, optional

Directions: 

Using the pipettes, the kids can pretend to suck up the water (nectar) and carry it to the hive (ice cube tray).

Baby Bees

Using play dough, we rolled out balls of dough, like an egg.

We used the ice cube trays to fill with play dough.

Queen Bee Headband

We also made Queen Bee headbands. The queen bee stays in the hive all day and lays eggs.

We decorated ours with black masking tape. It’s fun to wear a bee headband!

Our sensory bin contains the Honey Bee Tree game.

I also added an egg carton tray to simulate a bee hive or the honeycomb.

Bee Puppet

What do you think bees do in the rain? Some types of weather are dangerous for bees. Heavy rain can hurt or even kill a bee and the cold snow makes it hard for a bee to move its wings. I like that this lesson was more than just a craft, it included earth science.

I didn’t get a picture of the finished products, but below is the instruction sheet for the bee puppets.

After completing the puppets, the kids could put their weather cards face down and mix them up. Then turn over a card and decide if the bee would be in our out of the hive in this type of weather.

That is a just *some* of what we did for the week!