Honeybees and Carpenter Bees

Every month I can count on Mother Goose Time to provide activities and lessons that are not only fun and engaging, but also teach things like math, literacy, science, and the arts.  The past 2 days we learned about honeybees and carpenter bees.   

 Elli worked on patterning, and recognizing hexagons.

 She also worked on basic addition by picking 2 numbers and then adding them together into the honey jar.

 One of the numbers of the month is 15.  We used the hands on number and also the number card to work on letter recognition.  If Elli rolled a 1 she used the 1 from the number 15 to sting me. 

 She also worked on the number 15 page in her my little journal.

She had fun stamping 15 bees on to the my little journal page.

Every month there is a different friendly bee introduced.  I like that in addition to the educational aspects, Mother Goose Time also incorporates character builders.  This month we're learning about forgiveness.  Elli was able to earn her forgiveness bee badge.

 We read Where's The Honey?  Elli used the story telling pieces to retell the story.  She also put the pieces in size order.  She was even able to correctly answer the comprehension questions at the end of the story.  I'm always surprised by the amount of information she is able to retain.  These questions show me she understands a lot more than I think she does.

Every month also comes with an I Can Read Book.  These are simple stories with basic sight words.  They're good at helping Elli with letter recognition.

I always try to find books related to the monthly theme at our library.  There is always a supplemental book list, but we have a small library that rarely carries the suggested books.

This month included a box of wax sticks.  Elli used them to make letters and also flowers and bees.  We talked about how bees work together to build a honeycomb and then we worked together to make one out of the wax sticks.

Elli had a lot of fun with flower nectar painting.  We filled a souffle cup flower with paint.  She pretended to be a bee sucking up nectar and depositing it into her honeycomb.

We talked about how bees make honey.  Elli got to taste some, but couldn't decide if she liked it or not.

We used the story telling sequence cards to explain the process in more detail.

We talked about how carpenter bees make holes in wood and make tunnels for their eggs.  Elli made play-dough into a log and used a straw to make holes in it.  She used rice as the eggs, and planted one in each hole.  She's been having so much fun this week.