After looking at the topic poster and discussing the different kinds of homes bees can live in, we did the beehive stamping craft. It can be hard for the girls to use objects that don't really have a handle on them for stamping, like the bubble wrap squares provided, so I took a piece of tape and rolled it around their finger (sticky side out) and attached the bubble wrap to it (bubble side out). That seemed to work really well for all through of them. I let the girls pick their paint color and stamp away. Instead of making them stand up, I taped a piece of yarn to the back of one and used a rolled piece of tape to connect both hive halves, near the top. The hive opens a bit so they can pretend to fly their bees in and out and we can hang them up rather than have them sitting on a counter. |
| They even added the flower stamens so the bees had pollen to collect. |
Next we played with our shape of the month (hexagon). I showed them the wall shape, we counted the sides and talked about how hex means six. I pointed out the shape of the cells on the topic poster as well. I gave them black strips of paper to play with to see if they could make their own and then, because they were so interested in the Butterfly part of our monthly theme, I showed them how to trace hexagons onto paper to make a butterfly. A tip for tracing shapes: use a piece of rolled tape to attach the shapes to the paper so they don't move while your child traces. Both big girls decided to draw a flower and attach bees on the other side of the paper and all three wanted their creations hung on the wall. I think I might need to invest in a wire and clip art system to save my paint.
Fill the Honeycomb was a fun game and a good chance for Littlest to practice touching with one to one correspondence and take turns. She was in charge of giving the die to the correct person, which she loved. The girls did very well with this game since they are pretty good at counting. When we had emptied their flower cards, we counted how many cells were still empty on the honeycomb and filled the rest of them in with our extra circles.
The nectar game was a fantastic fine motor activity that my girls absolutely loved and did for close to ten minutes. They only stopped because we transferred all the water to the ice cube tray. Littlest adores anything to do with playing in the water and Miss M liked the gradations in color from having varying amounts of water in each compartment (I added food coloring for fun). It did take quite a bit of hand over hand guidance to help them get the hang of squeeze, release, squeeze with the included syringes. Littlest kept trying to scoop and accidentally sucking up the water she had just squeezed into the tray. I can see us doing this one a lot and adding some color mixing fun as well.
Lastly we started our journals. Miss M informed me that her self-portrait is her when she used to be a sad bee. When asked why she was sad, she said it was because she couldn't find a pink flower to drink from. I love her imagination. She drew her first initial by herself under the picture and I helped her with the rest of the letters. That's it for today!
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