Bee Babies

On day 3 with Mother Goose Time's Bees and Butterflies theme we learned about Bee Babies.  We did two of the activities on that day and had some great discussion about what a Bee Baby does during the day.  We even sang a song about Bee Babies to the tune of "Skip to My Lou".

Clean, clean, clean the hive,
Clean, clean, clean the hive,
Clean, clean, clean the hive,
Baby bees are busy.

Take, take, take a nap,
Take, take, take a nap,
Take, take, take a nap,
And wait for the worker bees.

Eat, eat, eat some honey,
Eat, eat, eat some honey,
Eat, eat, eat some honey,
Grow up big and strong.

I made Adam's headband to show the other two how they would look when they made their own.  This always helps them to get excited about the craft.  

 Then Adam colored his black paper black. 

Peter got started by sizing his headband.  It's fun to see what all they can do themselves now.  When we first started Mother Goose Time Peter was under 2.  So I was much of the work for him and now he can do it almost all himself.

I always like taking a picture of the mess on the table.  Here all my teacher guides are out and parts and pieces are getting set up.  We started All About Spelling 1 for Lachlan and Peter is doing it right along with us.  The first step was finding out what letters they had "mastered" which means they know all the sounds that letter makes.  In this program it's all about phonograms, so q is never just q but qu.  The letter O makes 4 sounds.  Reviewing sounds is easy enough to do while making a bee headband so I got out the 4 letters we are working on now.

Next I set up an activity from the Little Goose guide called Beehive Shapes.  This was the recommended Tray Play for the day.  I took the 4 different shapes in our attribute block set and traced them onto the paper. 

Then I took all the blocks off and asked him to put the circle on the circle.  He put it in the hexagon so I pointed to the circle.  He moved the circle block to the circle on the paper. 

He kept trying shapes and started being a silly boy.  He placed the hexagon on the circle and teased me with this face because he knew it wasn't the right spot.

 Silly boy.

 He kept moving around the shapes and was having quite a lot of fun. 

 And then this happened . . .

And then some more play. 

This was such a simple activity but he loved it.  When we were all done, I recycled the paper and we were all cleaned up.

 Lachlan kept working on his bee headband while I was playing with Adam.  I got him to stop for a quick picture.

Peter thought since he was a baby bee he should have little antenna's.  I love how this craft was meant to turn out to be a bee headband but getting there is all part of the fun.  He made all these creative choices we don't really give much thought.  He got to choose which medium he wanted to use to make the black stripe (paper, pen, crayon, colored pencil), which direction to make his stripe, how thick, how skinny, how long or how short the antennas are and how big or how little the stinger is in the back, which you can't see in this photo.  He of course chose a tiny stinger for a baby bee.

We have learned so much about bees through the first few weeks of this month and it's not uncommon for us to just do circle time and then 1 or 2 activities.  I wish we could do every. single. detail of each days lesson because it's all so awesome.  But if you are like us and can't get it all done, don't give up!  There is still so much learning to be done.  So go ahead, customize this amazing curriculum to fit your needs.  That's what it's there for.