Next week is bee week in Exploring Nature With Children and I’ve been really looking forward to it. Whatever we learn together about I always end up learning so much I didn’t know about the topic.
Here are the books I’ve pulled out for us to read together this week:
- Flight of the Honey Bee Part of the incredible Nature Storybooks series, this wonderful book tells the story of a bee called scout. Through the story and additional facts this book brings so much information about bees to life. If you buy one bee book, I would recommend you buy this one.
- The Bee I am always raving about the My First Discoveries series but I really do love them. This book, like all the others, is excellent.
- The Book of Bees This is better suited to an older child, but we will still look at parts of it. It’s a book which will last us for years to come!
- Bee: Nature’s tiny miracle This sweet illustrated poem is lovely for very young children.
- Insect Emporium. Whenever we get this out to look at I’m struck by how beautiful it is!
- Winnie the Pooh and Some Bees A cautionary tale about why one should never disguise oneself as a rain cloud to try to deceive bees.
We will likely use The Natural History Book, Natural World: A Visual Compendium of Wonders from Nature, and Nature Anatomy to refer to as well – these are all wonderful reference books to add to a home library.
I am planning on showing Frida this short video on honey bees and their amazing waggle dance. It’s narrated by David Attenborough and at less than three minutes long it’s perfect for young children.
We love the song: “Zimma zimma zee, busy busy bee! Sipping at the flowers, in the sunny hours: zoom, zoom, zoom. Oh! What do you suppose? He landed on your nose! Ooh I beg your pardon, I thought you were a garden.” It’s the perfect length for a pre-schooler to learn to recite, and great for toddlers to join in with too.
We will do some baking with honey (if you have any favourite recipes send them my way – I’m thinking some sort of cookie maybe?) and will have a tea party – hopefully in the garden if the weather is good – with some honey in our herbal tea.
We also have a few pollinator-friendly plants ready to plant out in the garden, and we plan on visiting a local garden centre to buy some more. This will likely lead to reading about pollination and how flowers grow.
If you’re interested, here is some of the hands-on learning we did on bees last year when Frida was two.
The books I’ve shared above are amazing to enjoy with your children, but in case you’re looking for a new novel to get stuck into yourself you could do worse reading The Bees (teenage children would probably like it too). I read it last year and ended up learning so much about bees and their hives, as well as enjoying the book as a dystopian novel. This is a good review of it.
What have you got planned for bee week? Send me your favourite honey recipes!
