Honey Bee Fine Motor Skills Activities and Pretend Play
Lately, my Instagram has been full of bee flatlays and beautiful activities. Although I haven't been inspired enough to actually put together our own homeschool unit, I was excited enough to put this blog post. It started when I was gathering ideas for someone else on Facebook and decided that these pictures were too awesome not to share. As I wrote, as so often happens, the post began to take on a direction of it's own.
Scroll down to the bottom for more bee ideas!
Giant Beehive // Ms Barbara's Blog
I'm so inspired by this egg carton beehive. I think it would be such a fun pretend play set up, encouraging kids to find pollen from around the home or classroom, making bees for the hive, putting eggs, larvae, and pupas into the cells, harvesting the honey, inspecting the honeycomb, and more. Click on the link to see more awesome bee ideas for preschool.
Tiny Honey Transfer // Still Playing School
There are several ways to practice find motor skills with Montessori-inspired transfer activities. This one uses a pipette and yellow water to work on precision placement. Challenge kids to only get the water in certain honeycomb cells or do different colors and see what they can create.
Easter Egg Bees Pretend Play // Planing Playtime
This blog has a lot of fun ideas for pretend play. The cute, Easter egg bees can collect pollen from flowers and take it back to their hive. I appreciate this blogger's use of literacy with labels and vocabulary cards for every aspect of the play time.
Pollen Transfer // ABCs to ACTs
By transferring the pompom pollen from the flower to the honeycomb, even young kids will be able to understand the important role that honeybees play in our world. I would also combine this activity with a banana pollination snack (read about it here). I recommend "What If There were No Bees" for a good explanation of bees within our ecosystem.
Honeycomb Sensory Bin // Pre-K Pages
I remember Honeycomb cereal from my childhood! It makes a great snack for a bee unit study, or substrate for a sensory bin like the one in the picture. The activity asks kids to pick out the bees and place them on 10 frames for a math application to the playtime. This would also be a great way to introduce natural, bee-made honeycomb into the classroom (or homeschool) with a taste test of different honey flavors.
Honey Pot Counting Game // The OT Toolbox
This activity really works the pinch grip and helps to strengthen fingers for handwriting, as kids press open the bee clothespins and attach them to beehive cards. Counting and one-to-one correspondence are also part of the lesson.
Preschool Theme Unit // Turners Tots
I was completely inspired by this teacher's printables! I want to make my own so badly. Especially her "beehive inspection" worksheet, which asks kids to find certain aspects of the hive and check on the bees' health. She also has the adorable, pollen writing tray for practicing letters, which I have included in my round-up picture above.
All this honey bee fun got me excited to read Winnie the Pooh! I literally just ordered it in the middle of this blog post. "The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh" will be our third read aloud as a family. We're currently reading "Mr Popper's Penguins," which you can read about by clicking the colored text. Here's a quick list of some more bee ideas for a theme unit and some quiet activities to do while the book is being read aloud.
> > > Get the Audiobook Here < < <
I'm really enjoying putting together these book and activities posts. Which one should I do next? What's your favorite read aloud book for early elementary?
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