Bees: A Parker’s Preschool Post

We home school Parker.  Yup.  Even with Reed being an Administrator for Alpine School District, I keep the Brave Hero home for all things educational.

His health makes this a necessity.

We do all kinds of stuff from Math to the Alphabet.   Today I’m sharing some activities we did for our Bee Unit.

BEES

Objective: Parker will be able to identify a Bee by Sight, Sound and Sign.

Colors: Black and Yellow  We incorporated these two colors into an art project AND did a lot of sorting using them.

Shape: Oval  We traced ovals and sorted ovals.

Song: The Bees are Buzzing In The Air

Fingerplay: Here is the Beehive

Here is the beehive

But where are the bees?

Hidden away where nobody sees.

Watch, and you’ll see them come out of the hive….one, two, three, four, five!

Make your hand into a fist (the beehive).  As you count bring each finger up and out of the beehive as the bees’.

Activities: Painting with flowers.  Gluing a the parts of a Bee together.  Up close and personal encounter with a Bee.

Books: The Beautiful Bee Book Time for Kids!  Bees!

Shape: Oval

I  started this unit by introducing what a Bee is.  I used flashcards and some videos I found on YouTube. YouTube is an amazing educational resource.

Along with the flashcards I introduced Parker to how to sign BEE and the sound a bee makes.

After introducing bees to Parker I kicked it up a notch.  I needed to know that he could recognize a bee compared to say……a cow.  (It doesn’t matter what you compare it to, just that he can tell the difference between the two.)

So I would present Parker with a picture of both a bee and a cow.  I’d then ask him to hand me the picture of the bee.  When he would do this, I would then switch the positions of the cow and bee and ask him to again hand me the picture of the bee.  This way I know he didn’t just get lucky the first time. 

You can continue doing this activity by increases the picture choices your child has to pick out the bee from.

I’ll try to get some video of Parker doing this for a later post.

Next we spent some up close and personal time with a bee that we caught in Parker’s bug jar.

After introducing Parker to the world of bees in a concrete way, making sure he could identify a bee, it was time to move to the abstract.

Parker made a bee to use while singing this song:  The Bees are Buzzing in the Air.

And because bees love flowers…..we painted (using black and yellow, the colors of this unit) with flowers!

WHAT do you mean, I’m supposed to keep the paint on the paper?

The finished product!

Because we are still working on the letters found in Parker’s name, I didn’t assign the letter ‘B’ to this unit like I would have when teaching preschool.  However I think from now on I will.   I would hold it to mastery, but use it instead to offer exposure.

That’s what we’ve been doing in Parker’s Preschool.  What kind of fun things have been going on at YOUR house?

Next up:  FISH!