Here is the bee hive, are the bees
February 18th, 2020
Did you know that bees are really important for our earth? In fact, did you know that all creatures on the earth are here for a reason? At the moment we are focusing on bees so we will tell you why they are so important for our earth.
Some of you might be scared of bees because they can sting, but they are an important part of our world. Without bees, we might not have flowers, fruits, vegetables, and other plants. In fact, bees play a crucial part in our world. We are learning to appreciate bees and understand what they do and how they help our earth and us.
This morning we spent some time examining flowers through a magnifying class and discovering what pollen looks like and what a flower is. We noticed that they have petals which are usually a bright colour. The bright colour of the petals, sweet nectar and their beautiful scent attracts bees and other insects. When Shelley was reading about bees, some of the things she saw said that bees and flowers have the “oldest love affair” in the whole world; bees and flowers have loved one another for such a long time. Flowers give the bees nectar for their honey and bees go from flower to flower pollinating and making sure that everything keeps on growing on our earth. POLLINATION was one of the big words that we learned today.
Today, when we read Fly Guy about Insects, and specifically the bee, we learnt a whole lot of new facts and some really long words.
1. People have skeletons inside their bodies and insects have their skeleton outside their bodies. When a creature has a skeleton on the outside of their bodies it is called an EXOSKELETON.
2. Insects have six legs and spiders have eight legs; therefore spiders are not insects.
3. An insect has three parts to its body—a head with two antennae that can smell, taste, touch and hear; a thorax in the middle and an abdomen at the end of their body.
4. Insects were on the earth before dinosaurs and they were much bigger than they are now Another big word that we learned today was METAMORPHOSIS which means that an insect goes through stages before it is born. It starts off as an egg, then it becomes larva, then a pupa and last an adult.
Metamorphosis means that an insect or creature goes through stages before it is born. It starts off as an egg, then it becomes larva, then a pupa and then an adult. A caterpillar goes through a metamorphosis as it starts off as an egg that evolves into a butterfly.
In the early part of the day, we had something to do at all four tables. All of our teachers sat with us at the tables and focused on a specific activity. Vieda sat with us when we examined flowers and drew them; Kai sat with us when we learned about bees and their Life Cycle; Liezel sat with us at a table with black and yellow strips of paper and tape and Shelley sat with us as we completed adding collage to our pictures that we drew about our trip to Skymark, last week. We loved adding different materials to our pictures and chatted about so many things while working.
With Vieda, we used magnifying glasses to look at flowers and we drew them onto a piece of paper, using a regular pencil. We had interesting thoughts about flowers which we shared while working. At Liezel’s table, we saw long strips of black and yellow paper and tape and didn’t know what to do. Shelley said that we can make whatever we want to. You can imagine what happened afterwards. Our creativity flourished and we sat for a long time cutting, pasting, shaping, talking and explaining what we were doing. It was amazing for our teachers to witness the diversity of our creations. Some of us made bees, some of us made airplanes and some of us made things that didn’t have names. You can see from the photos at the end of our journal, what we did. Kai spent time helping us understand the Life Cycle of a bee which we had not discussed in detail. We had pictures of the Life Cycle stages and words. We also used our bee hive with the ten bees inside it and matched them with numbers and beads.
We spent time in the park and enjoyed the sunshine but it was quite cold. At the end of this week, we will be planting flowers in Ohana’s garden in the park. Tomorrow we will be cleaning the area so that the soil is ready for our plants on Friday. We are looking forward to warmer weather as spring approaches and the flowers bloom, leading into our 10th birthday celebrations at Ohana.
We sang “Here is the beehive” and we played some fun games for our transition times. Before we go to wash our hands, usually we look for our names and put them on the magnet board. Today was a little different. All of our names were on the magnet board and the game went like this. Shelley stood in front of the board, hiding our names and she secretly took one off. Then she asked us “Whose name is missing?” and if our names was missing, we went and washed our hands. It took quite a while and we looked attentively at the names to see when ours was missing. During our transition to put our outdoor shoes on to go to the park, she called out our surnames and this made us laugh a lot. And for the third transition that we did, she looked at the detail on our clothes and said “If you have words on your clothes” or “If you have flowers on your clothes” or “If you have buttons on your clothes”……..go and wash your hands.
We love these fun, easy games and they teach us so many things. Thanks for a wonderful day. Thanks for the beautiful sunshine. Thanks for our friends and teachers. Thanks for the love.
Love always, all the children in Flowers Class.