Busy, Busy Bees at The Virtual Vine

Year before last, our class had a Bee motif. This bulletin board was in the hallway by our door. The bulletin board was put up and left up all year. The wording on the hive is very appropriate for our classroom. It reads:

“Sometimes looking into a classroom is a bit like looking into a beehive: the uninformed visitor might see lots of bees moving in many directions with no apparent logic, but the beekeeper knows what each bee is doing and how an activity fits within the overall pattern.”

Bee and Beehive Patterns:
The Mailbox Kindergarten June/July 1996

Inside the classroom, we had bees EVERYWHERE! Hanging from the ceiling, on behavior charts, on posters, on name plates; stuck all over the classroom. You can buy bees of all sizes to use in your classroom at your local teacher store.

Bee Clock Decoration: You can even use one of those big bees to make a decoration for your clock. You've probably seen those clock decorations in catalogs like Lakeshore. If you purchase one of those big bees, hang it on the wall where you want your clock to be. Then drive a nail through the wing or the body of the bee (depends on which kind of bee you get), then hang your clock on the nail. It will look just as good as one of the more expensive made-to-order clock decorations! Just make sure that the bee you purchase is bigger than your clock.

Name Plates: I also made bees/hives name plates for my students’ desks because I couldn’t find any to purchase. I made them using a graphics program. I made them horizontally and two plates fit on a page. Then I printed them off onto cardstock, wrote their names on them, and then had them laminated. They looked great!

Behavior Charts: I also made their behavior charts using bees and a graphics program. I printed it in black ink on yellow paper, then used bee stickers on them for good behavior. I like everything to match!

Busy Bee Bulletin Board: Cover the board with blue paper. Add white clouds using cotton balls, cotton batting, or sponge paint. Add a HUGE bee hive to the board. Make bees by cutting styrofoam balls in half and spray painting them yellow. This will be your bee bodies. Mark off strips of the body using masking tape. Now paint the ball black. Gently remove the masking tape and you will have yellow and black stripes! Using a low temp hot-glue gun, add wiggly eyes, black pipecleaner antennae and legs, and construction paper yellow wings. Outline the wings with glue and add irridescent glitter to the glue. Mount these on the bulletin board and use a black marker to make dashes behind each bee simulating their flight pattern. (be sure to put in some loops!) On the hive write: Ms. ____’s Busy Bees! If you’d like, you can label each bee with a student’s name. Be sure you have some swarming the hive!

Room Décor: You can also use the bee pattern from above to make bees to hang in your classroom. This time however, do not cut the styrofoam balls in half. Hang them from the ceiling using fishing line. If you know how to do paper mache, you could also make a hanging hive. The bees could be swarming around the hive!

Extension Books:
The Bee Tree ~ Patricia Polacco
Learning About Bees from Mr. Krebs ~ A. Flanagan, C. Osinski
Winnie-The-Pooh and Some Bees
Bumble Bee ~ Margaret Wise Brown
The Giant Jam Sandwich ~ J. V. Lord, J. Burroway
The Honeybee and the Robber ~ Eric Carle

Are You a Bee? by Judy Allen
Bee (Life Cycles) by Sabrina Crewe
Busy As a Bee by Melvin Berger
Busy, Buzzy Bees by Allan Fowler
Honey (What's for Lunch) by Pam Robson

First Day of School Activity: Provide each student with a paper with the following poem printed at the bottom of the page:

Look at me
I'm as busy as a bee
On my first day of school
At _________ Elementary!

Demonstrate to the children how to use a yellow crayon to make a circle (body) and color it in. Then demonstrate how to use a black crayon to make stripes on the body, circle wings, and two black antennae. Have them draw their bee on their paper to take home to show their parents how busy they’ve been!

Bee Activities: The Mailbox Primary June/July 1999

Bee a Reader Bulletin Board: Idea and Pattern in The Mailbox Kindergarten Apr/May 1999

Bee Wings: You can use black Bs cut out using the Ellison machine to make bee wings. Cut out two wings for each yellow balloon, add stripes around the balloon with a black permanent marker, then carefully attach a “B” wing on each side. Add a face to your bee with the marker as well.

It's Bee Season!

Flight of the Bumblebee: Provide each student a page with a bee sticker in one corner. Have them pretend that the bee is on the end of their black crayon. Play the song “the "Flight of the Bumblebee" and have them create what they think is the bee’s flight pattern on their page using their black crayon. Then read Berlioz by Jan Brett.

“How Many Bees?” Emergent Reader: Each student will each make their own emergent reader. Provide each student with a book already put together with the following sentence frame on each page:
How many bees?
___ bees

Each page would also have pictures of a certain number of bees at the top of the page. You can do this using graphics software. The number of bees could be filled in, or the students can fill in the number of bees (depending on your students). The students then color their bees.

If you have a small group of students, you could leave off the bee graphics and have the students add the correct number of bee stickers to their book pages. But “bee-ware”, some students are apt to cannibalize their book later and remove some of their stickers … then there won’t be the correct number of bees on the page.

Bee Counting Book: You can also use the above idea to make a counting book. On each page use the sentence frame: How many bees? Then the student will read the sentence frame and count the bees to get the correct answer. This will provide practice in one-to-one correspondence.

“Brown Bear” Spin-off Emergent Reader: This reader goes along the same lines as those above. Except the sentence frame on one page would be like: “Carla, Carla, how many bees do you see?” The name would be a student in your class. Either add a picture of that student, or have each student draw that student’s picture into their book. Then on the adjoining page, have the sentence frame: I see _____ bees buzzing around me! Again, you can have the number already written in or the student can add the number. These books can be used for practice in counting, number recognition, and number words if you use the number word in the sentence rather than the number.

Alternative format for this book could be to put both sentences at the bottom of one page. Then have the appropriate number of bees swarming around the student’s head in the picture.

Coordinating Pocketchart Activity: Have a sentence strip for each student with their name filled into the sentence frame: “____, _____, how many bees do you see?” Take a picture of each student; laminate. The students will read the sentences and match the appropriate picture to each sentence strip. (For some students you will want to write the names of the student in a different color ink so that they will be more easily distinguished from the rest of the sentence.)

Another Emergent Reader: Use the sentence frame: I see ____ bees. on each page. Either fill in the number to match the number of bee graphics on the page, or have the students count the bees and fill in the correct number.

Coordinating Pocketchart Activity: Make a sentence strip with the following sentence frame: I see ___ bees. In each blank, fill in a number one through ten. On 3x5 index cards, make a matching card for each sentence strip by placing the correct number of bee stickers on the card to match the sentence strip. Ex.:
I see 10 bees. <card will have 10 bee stickers on it>

Students will read the sentence, and find the card with the correct number of bees on it and place it on the row with the appropriate sentence strip.

Math Matching Activity: Cut out 10 to 20 hives from yellow or light brown construction paper. Program each hive with a number, either 1 – 10 or 1 – 20. If preferable, these hives can be mounted on pieces of construction paper. Make cards using bee stickers to match the hives with the correct number of bees. Laminate all. Students will count the bees on each card and match it to the correct hive.

Math Pocketchart Activity: Copy an appropriate sized bee pattern onto yellow construction paper to make 10 bees. Color bees using a black marker. Program each bee with a number 1 – 10. Copy appropriate sized hive patterns onto yellow or light brown construction paper. You will need 55 hives. (Remember, you need to have the bee and the hives proportioned so that you can get 1 bee and 10 hives onto one row of the pocketchart.) Cut out and laminate all. Put one bee in each row of the pocketchart. The students will count out the correct number of hives to match the number and place them in the row beside the appropriate bee.

An alternate activity would be to put the hives in the pocketchart, have the students count them and find the correct number to match, and place it in the row. You will also need to provide a number line for those students who are still having difficulty identifying their numbers. They can use the number line as a model.

Math Mats: If you can find bee mini-erasers, then you have the perfect manipulatives for making math mats. Copy enough hives to match the numbers that you’re working on. You can either leave them as is, without backing, or mount them onto cardstock or construction paper. Program each hive with a number. Laminate. The students will count out the correct number of bees onto each hive to match the number.

Alternative activity would be to do the same thing, but use flowers instead of hives.

Addition Math Mats: Copy two hives onto yellow or light brown construction paper and cut them out. They should be slightly smaller than half a sheet of paper turned vertically. Mount them onto cardstock vertically; one under the other. Make a (+) plus sign between the two hives with a black Sharpie marker. Laminate.

The students can use these with bee manipulatives to work addition fact sheets. They will look at the addition fact on their paper and place the same number of bees into the top hive as is the top number of their problem. Ex.

5
+2
----

They would place 5 bees on the top hive and 2 bees on the second hive, then count all the bees and write their response on their paper.

If they’re working on horizontal problems, just make the mats with the hives going horizontally instead of vertically.

Subtraction Math Mats: Have one hive mounted on cardstock or construction paper; laminate. The student will count out the correct number of bees to match the top number of the subtraction problem and place them on the hive. Then they will take away the same number of bees to match the bottom number of their subtraction problem. Then they’ll count how many bees they have left and write down their answer on their paper.

These mats and manipulatives can also be used for Story Problems. Ex.:
5 bees were taking it easy and hanging out at the hive. Another bee flew by and said that 3 of them had better move it, because they hadn’t finished their assigned duties. So, the 3 bees grumbled, but buzzed off to finish their work. How many bees were left hanging out and taking it easy?

2 Digit Addition Matching Activity: For each addition problem, you’ll need a 5x7 and a 3x5 index card and 2 hives that will fit on the top ¾ of the 5x7 index cards. To determine what size hives you need, turn the 5x7 index card vertically. Now place the 3x5 index card horizontally across the bottom of the 5x7 card. The 3x5 card will be your answer card, so the two hives should fit above the 3x5 card and have enough room to add a plus sign and a line under the two hives. Mount the two hives vertically at the top of the 5x7 vertical index card. Program each hive with a 2 digit number (you can make them with or without regrouping). Add a plus sign in the appropriate place and a line underneath the bottom hive. Now program a 3x5 horizontal index card with the answer. Laminate all.

The student will work the problem on a separate sheet of paper, slate, or dry-erase board, then find the correct answer card to match the problem. The answer card is placed underneath the bottom hive. Continue until all problems have been answered.

The same format can be used to make Subtraction Matching Cards as well by changing the plus sign to a subtraction sign. Make sure that the bigger number is on the top hive.

Egg Carton Bees: You’ll need paper egg cartons for this project. Provide each student with 3 sections of the egg carton. Have them turn them upside-down (hole to the bottom) and paint them black. Once the black paint is dry, have them paint yellow stripes onto the last two egg carton sections (the body). Glue wiggly eyes onto the first section for the head and add two black pipecleaner antennae. The antennae can be pushed down into the egg carton.

Beehive Phonics Activity: Make a beehive the size of a piece of posterboard. You can make it on yellow posterboard and outline with black … then no coloring needed! Write a capital B and a lowercase b on it with a black Sharpie marker. Where the “door” of the hive is, cut out the posterboard so that the doorway is open. Or, you could cut it on 3 sides (all but the left hand side) and have an opening/closing door. Program bee shapes with pictures … some with things that begin with B, and some with things that do not begin with B. Laminate all. Have the students decide which bees will get to enter the hive, because only those with pictures that begin with B are allowed into the hive. Have the students actually put the correct bees through the doorway. You might want to have a small bowl or something appropriate on the other side to catch the bees that are allowed inside.

Beehive Counting
Here is the beehive.
Where are the bees?
Hidden inside where nobody sees!
Here come the bees
Right out of the hive...
One, two, three, four, five!
~ Author Unknown

As a coordinating activity for this poem, make each student a copy of a beehive on yellow or light brown construction paper. The front of the hive should have 2 flaps that close over it like “double doors”. Print the poem inside the hive (behind the doors). Add 5 bee graphics for your students to color, or have them draw 5 bees or add 5 stickers on the inside of the hive. Mount onto paper, then place in their Poetry Journals.

“Bee a Reader” Bulletin Board: Each student will have a hive posted on the bulletin board with their name on it. For each book they read, they get a bee sticker added to their hive.

Art: Leftover laminating film could also be used to form bee wings.

Class Discipline Chart: For this to be big enough to hold all your students’ names, you’ll probably need to keep this on a bulletin board. Make a huge flower, with the petals big enough for each child’s name to be placed on one petal. Make a bee for each child programmed with their name. The flower should have the same number of petals as you have consequences for your classroom discipline. Caption: Bee All You Can Bee!

Each flower petal will represent one step of that discipline ladder. Each day, the student’s bee will start on the petal for “excellent behavior”. If they get into trouble, then their bee will be moved to the next petal of the flower (the petal that coordinates with that step on the discipline ladder). This continues throughout the day. Consequences will be administered according to the flower petal that the student is on.

For those students who’s bee never has to be moved, they will receive a bee sticker on their Behavior Chart. 5 stickers equal a trip to the Bee Hive (otherwise known as the Treasure Chest).

Teacher Resource Book: Buzzing the Hive ~ J. Echols Contains bee lessons

Bee Costumes: Paint brown paper grocery bags yellow. Add black stripes. Cut out “vest style” for each student. Make a black construction paper headband and add two black pipecleaner antennae.

“Bertha and Bubba Bee Adventure” Writing Activity: found in Lasting Lessons Teacher Resource Book (no specific title given)

Bee Estimation: Read the book, The Giant Jam Sandwich, then have your students estimate how many bees they think could fit on a slice of bread. Write down there estimations on a chart along with their names. Trace a bread slice onto an acetate sheet to be used on the overhead projector. Place either bee cut-outs or mini-erasers on the “slice of bread” to find out how many bees will fit on it. Compare to the estimations of the students; discuss. Then serve bread and jam as a snack.

Beehive Snack: This idea was posted on the ‘net, but I’m not quite sure how it would turn out myself. I included it because I thought some of you might like to try it. (I can’t quite picture it) Squirt some honey onto a paper plate; make sure the inside is sparsely covered. Using 7 Harvest Crisp crackers or any others in a hexagon shape. Lay down one cracker and then turn it over and position it in the middle of the plate, use the remaining six to attach to each side of the middle
cracker, creating a bee hive shape.

Bee-havior Incentives: Use B.U.G Tickets for motivators! When students are caught "Bee-ing Unusually Good" or caught doing "Unusually Good" things, they will get a ticket that will go in our B.U.G. Jar. We will draw a name every Friday. So the more tickets you have in the jar the better! Shared by: Christina Jones-Wilson, K Teacher, Chesterfield County Public Schools, Richmond, VA

**I found out about this idea when Christina needed some B.U.G Ticket printables. So I created these for her to use. If I'd have known what I was creating them for (I had no idea what she was going to do with them), I'd have put a bee on them instead of a dragonfly. :( B.U.G Ticket printable

Shape Sheets: These printable shape sheets can be used as tracing practice activity sheets if printed on regular paper OR if printed on cardstock and laminated they can be used in a center or work station with a Vis-a-via pen as a reusable tracing mats. OR they can be used as an assessment tool to assess whether or not students can trace shapes and then afterwards cut them out (MS benchmark objectives).

Circle Shape Sheet

Square Shape Sheet

Triangle Shape Sheet

Rectangle Shape Sheet

Bee Chair: 6/27/11 Just saw this cute bee chair at Lowe's! If I hadn't just bought new furniture for my Reading Station, I'd have me 2 of these! Love them! $16.97 (search at Lowe's for Bumble Bee Chair for more info)

Resources:

Buzzing a Hive from GEMS (Great Explorations in Math and Science) by Jean C. Echols

"Bee-utiful Bees" May Preschool/Kindergarten Idea Book (TEC 249)

Bee Name Plates: Susan shared that you can purchase desk nameplates with a bee on it from Frog Street Press. It is yellow with primary tablet lines on it and a big (cute) bee on the left. FST696 for under $4.00

She uses them for nameplates on the cover of her Bee Book (for BeeHavior) and says they are the exact length of a sheet of paper. Length or width? Hmmm ... I'll have to check that out with her.

She also found these things on her latest shopping trip! :)

Busy Bees Job Chart by Trend #T-8077. It has a beehive that is 35" high and about 35 bees. I plan to use this on my door with the beehive poem. It will be perfect. $8.99

Numbered Calendar cards 36 cards by Frog Street Press TT269 $1.99 I copied a beehive from www.kizclub.com. I plan to make a card for the beehive, and use it as a
pattern for August, AB- Bee, hive, bee, hive, etc.

Terrific Trimmers T-92047 by Trend bulletin board trim with bees all over it. $2.99

Desk Topper Name Plates by Trend T-69014 called Busy Bees $3.99 36 in pkg.