Busy as Bees

In addition to our focus on ladybugs this year, we also spent some time exploring the life of honeybees.

Beehive Art

After our bubble wrap prints dried, we turned this into a collaborative art activity. Everyone helped to draw bees in the hives.

 

Hexagon Building

The shape of the cells inside beehives resembles a hexagon, so we explored different ways to build that shape.

Pollen Transfer and Beehive Play

Like ladybugs, bees are helpful insects that aid in the growth of plants. I set up some flower cups around the room with pom-pom "pollen" inside. The kids used tweezers to pick up pollen from the flowers and eventually brought the pollen back to the egg-carton "beehive" in the sensory bin. 

Their play evolved, of course, and other additions were made to their beehive like drawing in honey with markers, using my bee figurines to act out worker bees and the queen bee, and using the yellow slime that we made earlier as honey as well. It was fun to watch their creativity!

Bee Books

I set out the leftover bubble wrap along with our books just in case anyone wanted some extra fine motor practice. :) 

Ladybug Learning

Our ladybug larvae kept growing and growing this week, and some are getting in position to pupate- which means we should have fully-formed ladybugs by next week!

So we've been getting ready with some different ladybug activities.

Ladybug Spots

We've used ladybug spots in our art and in math. 

Ladybug Books

We've read some fun ladybug books, including Yoo-Hoo Ladybug, The Grouchy Ladybug, and A Ladybug's Life.

Yoo-Hoo Ladybug was great for a more interactive reading. Each student had a turn to use the magnifying glass to find the hidden ladybug on the page.

Ladybug Journals

And of course we've been spending a lot of time observing the growth of our ladybug larvae and we've been writing about our observations in our ladybug books or journals.

We're excited to see how they change next week!

Nest Building

We are exploring living things that we might find in the garden this month, and so besides insects and plants, one of our other focus topics is birds. We first started talking about birds and eggs around Easter time, so we've already been building up some background knowledge.

This was our egg/chick exploration table back in March.

  

But today we focused specifically on nests. We read a new favorite book: Mama Built a Little Nest

The book showed us that there are lots of different ways that birds build nests, and that they typically use materials common to their environment. We even read about one bird that uses only their saliva to build a nest! So with a "there's no wrong way to build a nest" mentality, we decided to give nest building a try. I provided different materials found in either our preschool environment or the yard.

I also used this time to share a real, abandoned bird's nest that I found in my yard this winter. It was fascinating to observe the materials used in the nest and how it was tightly woven together to form it's circular shape.

There was a lot of great engineering, fine motor, and problem solving work going on as everyone tried different ways of building a nest.

We discovered that birds have a pretty tricky job! One kid said, "Nests are a little complicated..." It's amazing what birds can do with just their beaks and feet!

Ladybug Larvae

I love learning something new as a teacher. As I was researching for a spring unit project for this year, I learned that ladybugs go through a metamorphosis similar to caterpillars/butterflies! Last year we loved watching our caterpillars change into butterflies, and so I decided to give ladybugs a try this year. With all the resources out there, it's amazing how easy it is to experience this at home or in the classroom. I just ordered a kit from Insect Lore, the same company we used for our butterflies.

Our Ladybug Land kit came with 10 tiny, crawling ladybug larvae. They kind of look like little alligators.

We are really excited to watch the ladybug life cycle in action over the next few weeks!

We Love Rainbows

We kept coming back to rainbows throughout the month of March, along with some additional rain explorations.

Catch a Rainbow

This fun activity is so simple. Place a dark piece of paper in a tray, fill with water, and then add a few drops of clean nail polish. The drop will magically expand and form a beautiful rainbow. Wait a few more minutes for it to set, and then carefully lift the paper out to catch your rainbows!

Rainbow Word Wall

We built a rainbow word wall as we practiced working with different C-V-C words. 

Each color was a different word family.

Rain clouds in a Jar

This was a favorite activity last year, but this time I wanted the kids to have their own individual rain cloud. So I provided clear, plastic cups alongside the large vase I used as a demonstration.