Bee Shapes

​I have always thought it was better to teach children through hands on exploration rather than them sitting and reciting information. So, I love that Mother Goose Time provided a way to be able to teach the class about how bees make hives this week and at the same time teach them about the hexagon shape.
Shapes are sometimes boring for children to learn unless you develop an activity that happens to include the shapes. The invitation to create was about creating your own beehive. They were given the hexagon shape and told the different ways to trace, color or shade in the hexagon to form a hive. 

​This picture clearly shows the concentration that preschool/prek children put into activities they really enjoy. Playing is serious business! As they get older, they begin to be very intentional with their art work. They even begin to play out what they are going to do before they start to work. This is not a skill that I taught or introduced. This is a naturally occurring skill that I begin to encourage. As someone who tends to not be a natural planner, when I see the children developing the skill I try and encourage it because I want them to do better than I do.
 
The hive invitation to create helped me to develop other tracing and shading activities for them to do in their down time. Using different shapes, they were able to build pictures and create puzzles. 

Our next activity for Honey Bees was playing a co-operative game. We took turns working on filling a honeycomb with honey. We rolled the die and put that amount of yellow chips on the honey comb until it was filled with honey. I love these co-operative games. They are a great way to introduce, sharing, compromise and working together. Empathy is a strong part of these games because the children learn to soothe the feelings of their friends who may not have rolled well, or help the others in class who can not count as fast or as well as them. I am strongly in favor of competitive games, but I think that co-operative games are able to help children learn other social and emotional lessons that they will practice during their free play. 

Over all I loved the week of us learning about Bees, because we were able to explore our creative sides without worrying  about it looking like the art we have seen before. I also loved the empathy and joy shown in playing the honeycomb game. I can not wait to show you guys the rest of the butterflies and bees theme. 

For now remember:
Live Long and Keep Teaching! 

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