Butterfly Unit Study

Bee Unit Study

How is it possible that it’s been three years since I last posted?  I decided that I am going to start trying to post again now that it feels like life has slowed down a little bit.

We finished up school a few weeks ago and one of our favorite units was learning about bees.  I hadn’t actually planned on blogging about this, so I only have a few pictures that I took with my phone.

After we spent a few days learning about bees, we drew and labeled bees in our science nature journals.

We also studied the life cycle of a honey bee.

Hunter is looking at a sesame seed with his magnifying glass.  We learned that a bee’s brain is the size of a sesame seed.  It’s pretty amazing all of the things that bees can do with such tiny brains.

We took a field trip to learn more about bees.

Field trip- looking at the life cycle

Field trip- looking at the different kinds of bees

Field trip- doing activities with hexagons

We made some bee art.  The kids had to make a queen bee, a worker bee, and a drone.  Each one has different characteristics that they had to represent in their bee drawings.

Learning about bees has definitely made us less scared of them.  Now when a bee comes near one of us we just say, “It’s not going to hurt me, it’s just trying to pollinate.”

Spiderweb Painting

I showed you our spider we made out of playdough and pipe cleaners yesterday to go along with “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” song that Hailey loves.

So, I had a fabulous idea that we could do some “ball painting” to create a spiderweb look. It didn’t exactly work.

Here’s what you’ll need- paper, ball, paint, bowl, something to stir if you want to mix your paint together, and a box with sides.

Put some paint in the bowl.

Stir it up to create a fun new color. Or make your toddler upset because she has just decided that she doesn’t like mixing the colors together.

Next you should be able to put the paper inside the box with sides, add some small drops of paint to the paper, and then tilt the box to make the ball roll which will create lines all over the paper (our spiderweb in this situation). The problem was that I used one of Hailey’s golf balls- so it is hollow and didn’t really weigh enough to roll through the paint. It kept getting stuck in the little paint blobs.

So, we tried a deeper box so that Hailey could shake the box harder without the ball flying across the room.

This is the reason we didn’t use marbles (which will give you the best results- but only if your children no longer put everything in their mouths). The golf ball is covered in paint and is being inserted into Hailey’s mouth.

Here is our finished spiderweb. Which looks nothing like a spiderweb. BUT, Hailey had fun making it and that is what matters.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

Hailey loves “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” song so I thought I would do an easy project with her to make our own fun spider.

Here’s what you’ll need: Playdough and pipe cleaners.  We used pink because that is Haileys favorite color.  And also to keep our spider looking fun instead of scary.

Cut up the pipe cleaner into eight pieces to be used as legs.

We made our spider and then sang “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”  This is Hailey doing the hand motions for the “down came the rain” line.

And then Hailey decided she didn’t like the spider anymore, so she pulled all of the legs off.

Just in case you need the lyrics here they are:

The itsy bitsy spider
Climbed up the water spout
Down came the rain
And washed the spider out
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain
And the itsy bitsy spider
Climbed up the spout again.

And if you need the tune- check that out here.