Buzz with Bees Camp Day
Welcome to our “Fun with Flower Power! – An Amazing DIY Plants Camp Week” series. For Day 3 of our camp week, we focused on bees and why they are important to plants! Read on for themed ideas on crafts, links to educational and interactive games, food snacks, and experiments!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 But the gist of our day having our kiddos focus on some work books or online learning tools in the early morning, an intro to the day’s theme after they were done, some videos around lunch time, and themed activities (reading time, writing time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments) in the afternoon. Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
INTRO
Bees need no introduction! (Or do they?) If you’re looking for a quick intro geared toward kids, Kids Britannica has a short web page on bees: their characteristics, pollination role, colonies, etc… We included bees in our Fun with Flower Power! Camp Week as they relate to flowers and plants, so we focused on the pollination section.
WHAT TO WATCH
For our video of the day, we let the kids pick from some story time bee and bug themed books read aloud.
- Story Time: Are you a Bee? By Judy Allen
- Story Time: Bee by Britta Teckentrup
- Story Time: Backyard Bugs by Jill McDonald
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
In addition to some healthy snacks, we added in a fun little food activity that demonstrates how bees help pollination. There are quite a few tutorials / posts out there on similar experiments, but we followed the one from the Nature Museum: Bee Pollination Investigation. They got to each their favorite chips & donuts and learned a bit in the process! BONUS 🙂
READING
It’s no secret that reading helps prevent that summer slide. Some even say this is the most important. For our book of the day, we picked a Level 2 Non-fiction Book on Bees!
- Bees by Laura Marsh
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing helps prevent that summer slide by both encouraging their creativity but also their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: BEE, POLLINATE, FLOWER
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices.
- If you were a bumblebee, which flower would you like to land on the most. Why?
We also had a few leftover paper bumblebees from a recent party. The kids decided to use extra popsicle sticks to make a “puppet show” with bee families. It’s a great way to get their creative, storytelling juices flowing! Feel free to use the images below or the ones from our Winnie the Pooh Printable Images page for your own use!
CRAFTS
For our craft of the day, we followed a simple one on Michael’s 100 Projects For Kids. Page 44 has a simple Bee craft that you can make with some crafts you might have at home already: popsicle sticks, googly eyes, glue, and a few other items. We opted for using colored popsicle sticks so we could skip the painting steps.
STEM ACTIVITY
For our STEM activity, we decided to create a 3D life cycle of a bee, following the tutorial from steamsnational.com: Life Cycle of a Bee. They learned about bees while also playing with play doh! Definitely a fun learning activity!
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home play / summer camp guide! If you enjoyed this article, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other at home play / summer guides: DIY Summer Camps.
Happy Learning!
