The weather here in Illinois has not felt like spring at all this week…cold, windy, rainy, snowy! So the girls and I decide to take some time to explore bugs and the outdoors…using the book Bug Hotel. This is a great book that introduces children (and adults!) to several different kinds of bugs, without having to brave the cold weather! With interactive flaps, this books is bound to keep your readers engaged! For more information, check out Bug Hotel here: https://l6121.myubam.com/p/6978/bug-hotel
I love pairing book reading with crafts and activities! After reading Bug Hotel, we embarked on crafty activities, using things from around the house. First up…bees! We began by making giant bees out of paper plates, yellow tissue paper, black construction paper, glue sticks, googly eyes (because they make everything more fun!), and pipe cleaners. And yes, we happened to have all of those things in our house! The girls had a lot of fun adding the yellow tissue paper to the paper plate and loved that they were in charge of the glue! Check out my happy bee makers!
Once our paper plate bees were complete, we moved onto making honeycombs complete with fingerprint bees! For this activity, we used white card stock, bubble wrap, yellow paint, and black markers. I cut the bubble wrap into roughly the shape of a honeycomb and the girls went to work painting it yellow! Turn it over onto the card stock and you have a honeycomb! Dipping a finger in paint, each girl (with my guidance of course!) made yellow fingerprints around the honeycomb. Fast forward to later in the day after the paint had time to dry…it was time to finish our bees. Using a black marker, I showed the girls how to add stripes, wings, a head, and antennas to the fingerprints to turn them into bees. Our final step in the process was to reread our bee pages from Bug Hotel and talk about what we had learned about bees. We added the sentences to the papers and complete!
Stay tuned for more buggy adventures this week!
Books on the Back Porch 