Blog Archives

Beauty of the Bees

6/29/2023

“The hum of bees is the voice of the garden”
~ Elizabeth Lawrence

The garden is indeed filled with the harmonious hum of bees this summer! We read 'Bee Dance' by Rick Chrustowski to learn how honey bees communicate through a 'waggle dance' to tell the other bees where the best pollen and nectar flowers are and then played a waggle dance game.

We also read "Flight of the Honey Bee" by Raymond Huber and learned how the bees help the flowers make seeds by carrying pollen to different flowers and then played Pollination Tag! The pollinators (bees) chase the flowers. When a flower is tagged, it must give its pollen to the flower to pollinate it, and then turns into a fruit. The game ends when most of the flowers have been pollinated and turned into fruits.

The kids were amazed to learn that without the bees there would not be any apples on our apple tree in the garden. Thank you bees!

These beeswax crayons are so rich and vibrant! Thank you bees!

Bee Anatomy

Pollinator Habitat Design

More Favorite Bee Books

Summer Solstice Celebration

To honor our bee friends we made some buzzworthy honey recipes:

Honey Lime Kohlrabi Slaw

Ingredients :

6 cups kohlrabi spiralized
2 cups carrots spiralized
1/2 cup chopped cilantro ( one small bunch)
1/4 cup chopped scallion
lemon zest from one lemon, and juice
lime zest from one lime, and juice

Citrus Dressing :

1/4 cup olive oil
1/8 cup fresh lemon juice
1/8 cup lime juice
1/4 cup honey
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tablespoon umeboshe vinegar

Honey Cornbread Muffins

Ingredients

1 C cornmeal
1/3 C coconut flour
2 Tsp. baking powder
1 Tsp. salt
1/4 C honey
3 eggs room temperature
1/2 C almond milk
2 Tbsp. coconut oil melted

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a muffin pan with coconut oil.
Whisk the cornmeal, coconut flour, baking powder, and sea salt in a large mixing bowl.
Add the eggs, honey, and almond milk to another bowl and mix well.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix well, then stir in the coconut oil (so it doesn't solidify)
Evenly divide the batter between the baking cups.
Bake 13 -16 minutes or until lightly browned.
Cool completely to properly set up.

For our solstice celebration we made some beautiful beeswax candles!

Stockmar beeswax is an ideal modeling material that stimulates creativity and invention. The wax becomes pliable when warmed with the hands or placed near a heater (we used a hair dryer). You can make all kinds of cool sculptures and shapes, we even made an alphabet! Thank you bees!

A HUGE thank you to Auntie Jacqueline for the magical face painting! You can check out her professional face painting site at Colorful Events.

The song sparrows put on an amazing dragon performance for our solstice celebration! You can see a video of it on our Facebook Page.

Exploring Hexagons

Why are there these shapes on the beeswax?
Using hexagons enables bees to make very efficient use of space while using as little wax as possible. They hold the maximum amount of honey, while ensuring no space is wasted, because the hexagons fit tight, and side by side together, like a puzzle.

Bee Yoga

In yoga class we went on a bee adventure, pollinating flowers, making honey, and meeting new garden friends.

Bee Breath

This is a lovely practice that stimulates the vagus nerve and calms the nervous system.

To begin, inhale and then make a humming bee sound as you exhale.

With your next breath, close you eyes as you make a humming sound with a long exhale.

With the third breath, close your eyes and block your ears with your hands as you make a humming sound with a long exhale.

Doing Bee Breath in these progressive stages introduces kids to the importance of the senses and how sometimes it helps to close off our senses to find a quiet place to calm, soothe, and focus

Sandbox Volcano

Rainy Day Qigong

Herb Fairies

The adventure continues with book 3 as we learned about the wonders of Plantain!

Big Ivy Field Trip

We had an incredible trip to the Big Ivy National Forest... cooking on the fire, playing wilderness awareness games, and a round of Wilderness Uno. Then we donned our fairy wings and hiked on a truly magical journey through the fairy gardens at Mountain Light Sanctuary.

Before we had our tea party we offered a cup of tea to the forest fairies.

We took a journey on a magic moss carpet to visit the fae world in our guided visualization.

Thank you for your hospitality fairies!

Mathmagical Explorations

Math is more fun with a shaker! We explored steady beat, one on one correspondence, and sequential patterns in music class. Even the youngest of children can respond to music and the mathematical principles behind it.