A few weeks ago, we studied bees for our nature study of the Sonoran Desert. I thought summer would be a great time to observe bees, as much I am willing to observe them, but spring it actually when they are most active. Nevertheless, we learned a lot while we read some great picture books about bees, memorized a poem about bees, watched videos on YouTube about bees, and made some yummy snacks.
My favorite part about reading so many picture books about bees was seeing my four-year-old learn about how bees sip nectar to make into honey. It’s so easy to not realize what they don’t know when you’re so busy living life. We use honey for baking quite a bit. Now every time we use it, my daughter always likes to mention how bees made that honey for us.
Picture Books about Bees
The Sonoran Desert is home to many types of bees – cactus bees, carpenter bees, bumble bees, honey bees, and about 600 more species. That’s a lot of bees. The honey bee is not native to the Sonoran Desert, but it does well here anyway. Unfortunately, there are no picture books about bees in Arizona or the Sonoran Desert. The bees that are present in the desert live in other places as well, so regular picture books about bees worked well. Here are some picture books that I read with my kids.
The Beeman by Laurie Krebs and Valeria Cis
The Life and Times of the Honeybee by Charles Micucci
Are You a Bee? by Judy Allen
The Honey Makers by Gail Gibbons
The Bee Tree by Patrica Polacco
The Bee Book by Charlotte Milner
Honeybee Popsicles
One aspect of doing following a Charlotte Mason homeschool style is that baking and cooking count as school. While this may not be a popular opinion, but I think cooking is an important life skill. We live with so many fast food and convenient options, that people can get by with only knowing how to microwave their dinner. We want our kids to be well-rounded and skilled. This should include the skills pertaining to cooking and baking (or freezing in my case. Read on).
All that said, I made popsicles with my kids. We called them “honeybee popsicles.” We used frozen mango, frozen raspberries, and honey. We waited a half hour before we poured in the next layer. Technically, this isn’t cooking, but it’s teaching children how to make healthy snacks.
Pollination Experiment
Bees do about 80% of the pollination for flowering plants all over the world. That’s impressive. To help my kids understand pollination, we did the Cheeto puff experiment. Maybe you have done this before. You take Cheetos and crumple them up. Then you place them in a cupcake liner on top of a cut out flower. Take a black pipe cleaner and pretend it’s a bee. Go from “flower” to “flower” touching the pollen and spreading it to other flowers. It’s a super short experiment, but it’s effective for teaching pollination.
Honey from Arizona
Then we went to a bee farm and did our own private tour of some beehives. No one got stung or freaked out. We all got to eat fresh honey from the comb. Ok. We didn’t do that, but I thought about it. I wanted to get some honey from a bee farm in Arizona. We found some at Costco, but I am skeptical as to whether it’s all from Arizona. Maybe if you’re more ambitious, you could go to a bee farm. Or if you’re like me, Costco is also good.
Final Thoughts
Here’s fun fact: I was stung by a bee for the first time about two months ago. I saw friends get stung by bees growing up, but not me. I managed to escape the pain of a bee sting for a long time. It wasn’t a bad sting.
This bee unit was fun for my kids. We found unexpected ways to observe bees. One day we found a bee on our glass door from the outside. So we counted her legs, looked at her thorax, abdomen, and head, and watched her move around. I like those surprise observation moments. Maybe this post gives you some ideas for studying bees with your kids.
Carly from DesertHomeschoolDays.com
