B is for Bees

• Bee Eraser activities
1. First, use Bee erasers in a sensory bin (a container filled with rice, oatmeal, beans, sand, etc for playing with and searching through), for the preschoolers to find and sort (write a capital B on some and a lowercase B on others).
   ***We used tweezers to pinch them out, and dollar store veggie trays for sorting.
2. After they find and sort them by Capital B and lowercase B you can do lots of fun activities with them:
• Stack them the matching B or b
• Lay out patterns with the B and b’s (ie: BBbBBb…)
• Make shape outlines by lining up the bee erasers

• Wap-a-Bee
1. You’ll need a fly swatter (we got ours from the dollar store, or discount school supply has some really cute ones too) 
2. You’ll also need some paper bees with numbers 1-6 on them (or 2-12 if you use 2 dice). You can lay them on the floor, the table, or tape them on the wall!
• Roll a die/dice. Count the dots. Wap that bee with the fly swatter.

• Tanagram Bee Hives
1. We used hexagons from our tanagram set and shaped them together to make a “bee hive”
• Discuss hexagons, count the sides.
• Make hexagons using the red trapezoids (talk about trapezoids too!)
• Play with the tanagrams, let them explore and create! **patterns are always a must.
2. We talked about bees and how they make honey…and then ate some Bit-o-Honey candy!

• Read: Swarm of Bees by Lemony Snicket and Rilla Alexander
1. Talk about emotions, particularly Anger and Calm/Happy
2. Art Project (like in the book). You’ll need:
• Q-tips
• Black or White paper (depending on if they want to make angry bees or calm bees)
• Black and yellow paint
  ***Dip the q-tips in the paint and make little dots of color on the paper. The bees are suppose to be dots, just like in the book.

• Perler Beads – Bee patterns
1. Use perler beads to create black & yellow pattern bracelets/necklaces.
2. Use black and yellow perler beads on the peg boards to create melted bee creations.

**Find more BEE inspired preschool activities HERE!!

H is for Honey

It was a cold and drizzly fall day today, so a nice, warm HONEY day was perfect for preschool. We gathered up all of our honey books and settled in for a relaxed preschool day. I would recommend all of these books below. It’s a great mix of fun fiction and simple non-fiction with great pictures.

• Read “The Beeman” by Laurie Krebs, Illustrated by Melissa Iwai … there are two illustrated versions by the same author.
  1. I really liked the illustrations in this book. A simple, rhyming story telling how honey is made, from the flower to the jar!
  2. Be sure to point out the hexagon-shape of the honeycomb in the book.

• Exploring Hexagons
  1. Gather all the yellow hexagon shapes from a bucket of pattern blocks. We have this bucket here. I got these last year and the kids love building with them and designing pictures.
  2. Count the sides … hexagons have SIX sides.
  3. Show them a picture of a honeycomb in one of your books.
  4. Show the kids how to place them side by side to form a “honeycomb”
  5. NOTE: just fyi … if I was going to buy these blocks again, I would buy the wooden blocks here. They are thicker and the kids can build vertically with them without the blocks tipping over.

 

• Honeycomb Beehives … I loved this idea from Spark Preschool!
  1. Print a copy of the blank beehive above (click on the picture).
  2. Taste test a honeycomb cereal  
  3. Show the kids that the cereal also has six sides.
  4. Glue honeycomb cereal onto the hive.
  5. Add bee stickers! We didn’t have any, but they would have been cute.

• Stories & Honey Tasting … for the rest of our preschool, we just had a fun, relaxing and tasty storytime!
  1. Collect several flavors of honey sticks. The family farm just down the road from us sells honey sticks. I let my girls pick out several flavors to try. Mmmm! You can also order a honey stick mix from Amazon. They were 4/$1.00 at the family farm, so the Amazon price is not bad.  
  2. Choose a book to read and a honey stick to sample! Try to guess the flavor. We really enjoyed all of these books … and most of our honey stick flavors  

• Scones & Honey Butter … it is cold and drizzly outside, so this was the perfect warm and sweet snack today!
1. Make a batch of your favorite scones (cornbread would be yummy too!) I used our very simple, family recipe below.
2. Spread honey butter on your scones while they are still warm. An easy and delicious recipe here. I only made 1/4 of what the recipe called for and it was plenty. Enjoy!!