Bees play a vital role on our planet and their numbers are in fast decline. Bees help us to grow lot of different foods and beautiful flowers.
Ask your children if they know what special jobs bees do? Are they able to tell you?
Whether we are on holiday, playing in the garden or visiting a local park we see bees buzzing around yet some children might be unaware of the important jobs they are busy doing. There are a couple of dates throughout the year that are well worth a talking topic at very least....
A couple of dates to pop in your diary are:
Bees Needs Week - 9th to the 17th of July
National Honey Week - 23rd to the 29th October
There are different ways we can all pull together to do our bit to help these special insects.
We can plant more flowers in our gardens and settings, refrain from cutting grass too much and seeking specialist help if we discover a nest.
It may be worth talking to children too about if they were to find a bee taking a rest on the floor. We see this often and from experience some children have a desire to run up and stamp. They don't do it to be malicious of course but giving them the understanding of how important these creatures are will guide them to be more considerate and thoughtful.
Today we have the lovely Sue Baxter joining us on Learning and Exploring Through Play to share a fabulous Bee Tuff Tray. The children have been really busy learning all about bees and the important job they do for us all.
Together we made some yellow play dough. I gathered some bits and bobs for the children to enjoy some loose part play during this activity. Adding loose parts to play dough really does extend learning and imagination. I find the party platters with the dividers work really well with loose part play dough set ups. It's all contained and easily accessible to the children.
In the centre was the play dough and bee small world figures. The leaves on sticks and collection of bees belong to the game 'Honey Bee Tree' by ELC. I was lucky enough to locate two games on my car boot hunts. So I use parts from one game for small world/play dough activities and the other set to play the game. (See more on the game below).
You may also recognise the flowers and duplo flower blocks that we used in our Spring Tuff Tray.
I had some great jars to help represent the bee hives and we used them along with pipettes to suck up honey and squeeze it back out again.
We discussed how the honey smelt, the texture, the taste. I was able to observe the children using Mathematical language - full, empty, half full, inside. on top. It gave me a great indication of where the children's learning and understanding was at.
There were bee print outs, bee figures and teddies and lots of bee related books, including:
Billy the Bee - Ann Bribbin Murphy
My Book of Bees
Some other titles you may enjoy around this topic:
Our tweezers came in a treat for this activity and accompanied the hexagonal Ice Cube Tray which was perfect to represent a bees nest and how they lay eggs. The children carefully pinched up the 'eggs' and placed them inside they own cell. We accessed some videos on YouTube which showed this process perfectly. The time lapse video fascinated the children and they got so excited at the very end when the eggs began to hatch!
The orange item belongs to the 'Honey Bee Tree' game mentioned above. Sold at Early Learning Centre the game is suitable for 3-8 year olds as a guide. It is also available on Amazon - UK/US
All the activities you see in the Tuff Tray were brought together so we could talk about Bee Week and some of the activities the children wanted to do.
I then separated them and the children selected what activities they would like to do.
In addition to all the activities mentioned above we also baked some rather delicious honey cakes. We measured the ingredients together before putting them all together. Taking turns with the mixing and then loading up the cake tins. The children enjoyed the cakes for snack time and took a couple home to share with their families.
A big thank you to Sue Baxter for sharing with us yet another fabulous learning set up for the children!
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These ice cube trays are amazing at getting the ice out with little to no effort. Our ice maker died a few months ago and has had to rely on bagged ice until we picked these up. Now our ice bucket is always full and no more trips to the store to get more ice amazon …..
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