Bee Basics

We spent a week learning about bees with Mother Goose Time.  

The kids made bee headbands and flew around the room.

They used bubble wrap to paint beehives after we spent time talking about bee homes.

The kids made bee puppets with weather cards.  They glued tissue paper to a cup and added a bee on a craft stick.  They could pick weather cards, and if the weather was nice the bee could come out of his hive, and if it was cold or rainy he would pop back inside.

The kids got to make a counting game to take home.  They decorated hive pictures and added a number strip and the same number of bees to their hive.  

We learned about drones who are the worker bees.  The kids used hexagon stencils to make a hive and added worker bee stickers.  

Literacy is practiced all month long with Mother Goose Time.  The letter K was introduced, and the kids colored their letter K books.

They did work in their little journals.

In addition to the literacy work, there are always games and activities to increase math skills.  The kids played fill the honeycomb to practice counting and number recognition.

We played bee careful where the kids took turns saying a number and flipping over the same numbered flower looking for the hiding bee.  

The kids always love the look and find glasses and theme poster that come in every Mother Goose Time box.  They take turns looking for the pictures and completing prompts, like buzz like a bee or flap your wings like a butterfly.

The kids designed their own bees and then flew them to whatever color I called out.  

When learning about bee homes the kids designed houses to hide bee and butterfly magnet pieces that go to this months book of the month.

Grasshoppers, Ants and Bees

We finished up our first week of Mother Goose Time's May theme of bugs and crawly things by learning about grasshoppers, ants and bees.  

We read the book of the month.  A new book is included in every monthly box, this months was There are Bugs!  We actually already had a copy of this book and it's great to use when learning about bugs.  On every page there are numerous photos of bugs that are mixed in with cute illustrations.

Elli worked on designing the cover of her my little journal, and also completed the number 9 page.

We read the fable of the ant and the grasshopper.  Elli used the story pieces to retell the story and we talked about working hard.

Elli really liked playing ant colony.  We took turns spinning a spinner and adding the same number of "ants" to our ant hill.  After we each had a turn Elli guessed which one had the most ants, and then we counted to see if she was right.  We played this a bunch of times, she loved dropping the ants into their colony.  I love that she is having so much fun learning math skills

The girls had lots of fun trying to see how far they could jump while pretending to be grasshoppers.  They also worked on jumping to each number while counting.  They were laughing and playing this for a long time until they crashed and smashed their heads together.

Elli loves the invitations to create that come in every monthly box.  She has a great time and will spend long amounts of time working with the different materials to create her own art.  

Elli used play dough and beads to create ant colonies with little ants.

Bingo was definitely the favorite game of the week.  We played it SO many times before Elli was finally ready to move on.  

Elli always has fun making bee hives out of egg cartons.  She also has a little wooden bee set with hives, which was a great addition to the days lesson.

Hornets

 We finished up our second week with Mother Goose Time by learning about hornets.  During circle time the girls used the attribute blocks to create a black and yellow pattern.  Since we're working on the number 16, they worked together to count the pattern out to 16 pieces.

We looked at the daily topic poster and talked about the parts of a hornet.  Then we sang Head, Thorax, Abdomen.

The girls used the sight word pointers to look through books and find matching words.

The girls LOVED playing apoidea matching.  I hung 8 different bee and wasp cards around the room.  The girls would pick a card from a pile and then buzz to the matching apoidea hanging on the wall.  They played this quite a few times.

The girls did some more work with the attribute blocks.  They sorted them by size, thickness, shape and color.  

The girls finished up the day by making their own hornet's nest.  They used a real nest we had and also the picture that was included as models to make their own nests out of paper bags and crepe paper.  Next week we move on to metamorphosis and butterflies.

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.