Bee & Pollination Craft-tivity

 

Jet & I made these cute bee & flower crafts yesterday and did a follow-up fine motor activity to illustrate pollination. The original idea was mine, but Jet also gave input and I just love the way it all came together!

To get started with this project you’ll need to print out a realistic picture of a bee. I chose the image above from this website. Print it on cardstock & cut out the body, cutting off the legs, wings, & antennae. You’ll be replacing them with something more useful.

This step is optional, but Jet was begging to do it, so I let him color the bee with markers. I try not to let “pretty” be my goal with crafts, but this did make for a nicer finished product.

 

Next we moved on to decorating our bee. Jet tore up small pieces of yellow tissue paper, which I had intended to have him glue onto the bee, but once again the kid had a better idea than his mom and suggested that we crumple the paper into small balls before we glued them down.  This took a little longer, but I love the way it gave the bee texture! (and the extra fine-motor work)

Jet used a q-tip to apply the glue for the crumbled paper balls.

This next step probably would have been better done before the decorating, but……I didn’t. Whenever you do it, you’ll want to hole-punch six holes (3 on each side) of the bee’s thorax. This is where the legs will be attached. (Looking for more info on bee anatomy? There’s a great free worksheet set available here.)

I wasn’t able to get many pictures of this next step, but hopefully I can explain it well enough. You’ll want to bend a pipe cleaner into the shape shown, put a line of glue (I used hot glue) on the top of the bee between each pair of leg holes & thread the two ends of the pipe cleaner into the holes, landing in the glue. I also bent a small piece of pipe cleaner (I used 1/4) and glued it onto the head for antennae.

Now on to the wings! Bees actually have two sets of wings, the fore wings and hind wings, which connect together with a row of hooks. For our model bee I used 3/4 of a pipe cleaner for each of the fore wings and 1/2 of a pipe cleaner for each of the hind wings.

For the flower portion of our project we also started with a printed pattern. I chose to keep it simple and went with the picture shown above which you can find here. I printed it on cardstock & cut it out for Jet. He tore up small pieces of pink tissue paper and glued them on, overlapping them as he went to cover up all the white of the paper. After Jet was finished decorating the flower, I hot glued a bottle cap that I had rescued from the recycling into the center.

Here are Jet’s finished crafts ready for our fine motor activity. As you can see I filled the center of the flower with yellow & orange pony-bead “pollen”.

Before starting our fine motor activity, Jet & I read Bee & Me and talked a little about the importance of bees and their role in pollination. This book has good information & a cute story that encourages us not to be scared of bees but to appreciate them for their contributions. We also own Honey in a Hive (from the Let's Read & Find Out Science series) & The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive. I hope to get to both of those later, but Bee & Me by Elle McGuinness is my top choice for a gentle introduction to bees.

After brushing up on his bee knowledge, Jet got busy letting his bee visit the flower and pick up some "pollen". He exercised those fine motor skills by threading the pollen onto the bee’s legs.

I didn’t get a picture of it, but I also hot-glued a wooden clothespin to the underside of our bee. It gave Jet something more substantial to hold onto and allowed for some extra fun!

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How to take the “Roll” out of Rolled Paper

Reader Question: How do you get the paper you cut off of a roll to lay flat without taping it?

I received this question from a reader and thought I’d answer it here on the blog in case others were wondering the same thing.

It’s actually easy once you know this little trick:

After you cut the paper off the roll, rub it several times (rolled edges out/up) along the edge of a table or counter while applying gentle pressure. If you need it flatter still rotate the paper 90-degrees (rolled edges still up) and repeat.

I can never quite get the corners totally flat, but this little process helps tremendously and will definitely allow you to ditch the tape.

(You can use this for posters that have been rolled up as well.)

Hope this is helpful!

If you have any other questions feel free to comment below or email me, and I’ll do my best to help you out!

Don't forget to follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, or by email for more tips, crafts, & activity ideas.

Craft paper by the roll:

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Snowflakes, Art Prints & The Artist Katsushika Hokusai

Jet is 44 months, Dude is 7 years old, & Spudder is 5 years old

We did some art experimenting today that evolved into 3 different art projects for my 3 different students.  I was trying to find a way to have them all involved and the pictures above show my proud fellas with the resulting projects.

We started off with a little bit of reading in our Polar Lands book and decided to make snowflakes as described in the book. I knew we'd need a little bit heavier than normal paper for the extension projects I wanted to do, so we went with fingerpaint paper, but later switched to cardstock for Spudder's project. You’ll see why later.

One thing we learned from the book was that all snowflakes are actually 6 sided. This was news to me, and necessitated a different method of paper folding than I was familiar with. Instead of folding a square into 1/8ths, I traced a dinner plate to get a large circle, cut these out for everyone and folded them into 1/6ths.  I found the easiest way to do the folding to be to fold the circle in half, bend (but don’t fold) it in half again and just put the smallest crimp in the top edge (so the center point is marked) and then fold the 1/2 into 1/3s. Despite my wordy description, it was actually really easy.

Each of the boys cut triangles or other shapes into the edges of their snowflakes, being careful not to cut all the way across. Jet was a little unsure of himself at first, but after showing him how easy it was to cut two intersecting lines, he took off cutting triangles.

After the snowflake unfolding excitement, Jet continued with his part of the project by turning his snowflake into a stencil for some blue paint. A paint roller or sponge pouncer probably would have been ideal for this project, but we didn’t have either, so I just reminded him to dab with his paintbrush instead of smearing. I also didn’t bother to tape the snowflake down. I just held it and got my hands messy. The M&D paint we used washes up pretty well.

Tada!

For Spudder’s snowflake we did something a little different. I wanted to let him use his snowflake to make prints. We tried using the snowflake he’d cut out of fingerpaint paper first, but it was just too big and delicate after multiple attempts, so he went back and cut a smaller snowflake out of cardstock, and that worked better.

After spreading a thick layer of paint on his snowflake while it was laying on a scratch piece of paper, he turned it over, positioned it on his project page, covered it with a paper towel, and applied a little pressure.

Then carefully peeled the snowflake back to reveal his print. I tried to encourage him to overlap his prints, but he wouldn’t have any of that.
(This could also be a fun start to a winter scene project.)

Dude did go ahead and make the snowflakes with his brothers, but I really had a different project intended for him. His project was from the book, The Usborne Art Treasury, a wonderful book that combines artist studies with simple art projects. This particular project was inspired by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai.

We didn't do the project quite like the book said, but we were close. To make his print Dude used a pencil to etch a Hokusai inspired drawing into a piece of Styrofoam that I cut from a disposable food tray. He then used blue paint to make several prints from his etching. Dude enjoyed this immensely and immediately suggested we make 30 prints! We settled on 6 instead.

His favorite!

  

You can find biographical info on Hokusai, a nice size picture of one of his most famous prints, the full details of this project as well as many more in The Usborne Art Treasury. Dude used it as well as the Children's Book of Art to put together a short presentation on Katsushika Hokusai for his homeschool co-op class.

Here's a link to an animated documentary about Hokusai on YouTube that you might also find helpful:

 https://youtu.be/cebBWjgGAAQ

More book suggestions for an artist study:

More book suggestions on snowflakes:

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