Bee-Themed Tot Trays

It’s been quite a while since I’ve set up Tot Trays at our house, but last week as I was planning out a bee unit study and thinking of activities for my Preschool and Kindergarten guys, trays seemed like the perfect set-up. And I have to say after having these out for a week, I’m remembering all the reasons I like them: fine-motor skills practice, open-ended exploration, creativity, logic, & a defined work-space. What’s not to love! (You can see more about Tot Trays over at 1+1+1=1.)

Here are the Bee-Themed trays that we had out this week:

Make a Beehive

I saw this clever idea for making a beehive out of toilet paper rolls over at Deceptively Educational. We followed her instructions for the most part, only instead of gluing it together we used this as a fine-motor paper-clipping activity. To better accomodate the paper clips, I did cut my hexagonal cells to be a little wider. I found 1 inch to be just right. All the boys really loved this activity and I ended up cutting up more cells for them.

Bee Fraction Puzzles

I made this hexagonal puzzle page to expose my boys to the idea of fractions. I don’t expect full comprehension at this age, just EXPOSURE. While they worked the puzzles we talked and I used keywords like “whole,” “part,” “half,’' “fraction,” etc. There’s a template on the second page of the download that I used to cut the puzzle pieces out of craft foam. You can download your own copy HERE.

Pollen Punch

For this tray I borrowed the flower from our Bee & Pollination Craft-tivity and paired it with a simple hole-punch and some yellow construction paper. The boys punched & punched & punched out “pollen” exercising those little hand muscles along the way.

Bee Life Cycle 3-Part Cards

These Bee Life Cycle 3-Part Cards from Trillium Montessori were a huge hit with Jet. He laid out the full cards and matched up the picture and word cards while we discussed the life cycle of the bee. Another day he put them in a circle to better illustrate the continuing cycle and matched the cards up again. You do have to take the extra step of subscribing to the Trillium Montessori blog to get the link and password for their free downloads page, but (check out those smiles) it was definitely worth it for me!

Nectar Transfer

The boys used a dropper “proboscis” to transfer colored water “nectar” to ice cube tray “cells.” All 3 of my older boys got in on playing with this tray together. This was especially nice because I could hear Dude appropriately using (and inadvertently exposing his brothers to) some newly acquired bee vocabulary as they played. Brother teaching brother! I first saw this idea on the For the Children Blog where they used a turkey baster. My boys would love that, but we didn’t have one so I went with the droppers instead.

Bee Playdough Mat

All of my boys like playdough, so I knew this creative tray would be a hit. It was used multiple times throughout the week. The printable is from This Reading Mama. I just gave them some art supplies that were close at hand and let their imaginations take over. Next time I think I’ll give them scissors too.

If you're looking for more Bee-themed fun check out our
Bee & Pollination Craft-tivity

In addition to the above activities the boys also got to drink juice through their proboscises (straws) and taste test some local wildflower and clover honeys.

Book Recommendations:

As usual books provided the real meat of our unit study.

Here were our favorites.

Literature

The Bee Tree
by Patricia Polacco
The Bee Tree tells the lively story of a little girl and her grandfather who go on a hunt for a Bee Tree. Friends join the pair as they scramble to follow bees back to their hive. There’s not much information on bees in this book, but it’s a lovely & fun story that really encourages literacy in its final pages. I think anyone who loves reading will really appreciate this book.

Bee & Me
by Elle McGuinness
This quick read combines factual information about bees with the sweet story of a bee who gets lost and finds himself stuck inside of a little boy’s room. The book encourages kids not to be afraid of bees, but to appreciate them for their contributions. It’s perfect for even the youngest readers.

Non-Fiction

Honey in a Hive (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2)
by Anne Rockwell
 Honey in a Hive is a great non-fiction bee book for 3-8 year olds. It's 40 pages pack a good bit of knowledge into short descriptions and informative illustrations.

The Honey Makers
by Gail Gibbons
I love, love, love The Honey Makers by Gail Gibbons. There's a wealth of information in this picture book covering everything from bee anatomy, the bee life cycle, a detailed description of the various duties of worker bees, and of course how honey is made. This book is pretty detailed and can be a bit wordy, so I'd recommend it for the 5+ age group. Even I leaned some things from it!

The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive

by Joanna Cole
Who can resist Ms. Frizzle? I know my boys can't! This book follows the adventures of an elementary school class and their ecentric teacher as their bus is magically transformed into a beehive (and the children into bees). Each page is practically overflowing with information as you can see labeled diagrams and notes the children take in their notebooks, as well as speech bubbles that often provide humor and give you insight into each characters personality. There's a lot here for everyone and I'd recommend this book for ages 4+. And if your voice is getting tired by this point there's also the The Magic School Bus TV Series. The Inside a Beehive episode is on disc 4, episode 6. It's very similar content to the book. (I opted to read the other books this week and let the boys watch this one on DVD.)

Linking up this post at:

Tot School @ 1+1+1=1

After School Activities, Inspire Me Monday, Practical Mondays Linkup, Literacy Musing Mondays, Thank Goodness It's Monday, Monday of Many Blessings, Montessori Monday, Tiny Tot Adventures

Littles Learning Linkup, Laugh & Learn Linkup, Natural Beach Living, Hip Homeschool Hop, So Much at Home

Mom's Library, Everything Early Childhood, A Little R&R, The Mommy Club, I Choose Joy

Hearts for Home Blog Hop, Learn & Play LinkUp

Preschool Corner, Learning From Each Other, PinWorthy Projects

Read More: "Bee-Themed Tot Trays"

Crayon Resist Penguin Science + 1 More

We may not be knee deep in snow right now, but we are knee deep in a p-p-polar unit study over here in the FTP household. As part of that we’ve spent some time studying penguins. Here are a couple of hands-on science activities that we’ve done to illustrate some of the concepts we’ve learned about penguin behavior and anatomy.

1. Crayon Resist Penguin Science

 

To do this activitty we used:

white paper

crayons in white & orange

water color paints in dark colors

The first step in this project is to draw a penguin outline on your white paper. For the most dramatic results, Dude did this with mostly white crayon, but you could use another light color like yellow or orange, if the white is too hard to see. Dude used the directions in our Follow the Directions & Draw It All by Yourself book as a reference for his drawing.

Next paint over the entire page with dark colored water color paints. As you do the crayon wax from your drawing will repel the water in the paint and protect the paper underneath from being colored, revealing your penguin drawing as you go.

The result is a neat combination of artistic technique and science. The crayon wax coats the paper and protects it from the moisture of the paint the same way the penguin uses a special oil it produces to coat it’s feathers and protect itself from frigid waters.

The second activity we did is an oldie, but a goodie!

2. Blubber Science

I’ve seen this project done a lot of different ways, but here’s what we used:

1 or 2 quart sized zip-lock bags

1 sandwich sized zip-lock bag

shortening (or lard)

a container of ice water

tape (optional)

We ended up not using it.

The first thing you want to do is put your “blubber” (the shortening or lard) into the quart size zip-lock bag. I used about 2 1/2 cups, but could have gotten away with less. Next, put your hand into the sandwich sized bag and push it into the middle of the “blubber” making sure to leave a thick layer on all sides.

It should look something like this.

I had originally planned on taping the tops of the two bags together at this point, but decided to skip it. (and would again if we repeated this project)

Now you’re ready to get experimenting! We decided to get out a second zip-lock bag to use as a control and the boys took turns wearing an empty bag on one hand and the “blubber mitten” on the other and dipping both hands into the container of ice water. The advantages of a layer of blubber weren’t hard to feel!

Looking for more information & activities about penguins?

We also used & would recommend the follow resources:

Easy Make & Learn Projects: Penguins

We used this book to make penguin masks, models, & maps showing where various types of penguins live and how they behave.

Penguins (Smithsonian) by Seymour Simon

Fabulous pictures & a great general reference book about penguins

  March of the Penguins DVD
Chronicles the harrowing journey that the emperor penguins make at the South Pole


I'll be sharing this post over at:

Tot School @ 1+1+1=1, Tree Valley Academy, Learn & Play Linkup
Natural Beach Living, Hip Homeschool Hop, Littles Learning Link Up
So Much at Home, Hearts for Home Blog Hop
& Everything Early Childhood

Read More: "Crayon Resist Penguin Science + 1 More"

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:

Sharing this post at:

Tree Valley Academy & Tot School @ 1+1+1=1

Read More: "Snowflakes, Art Prints & The Artist Katsushika Hokusai"