Bees

Today we did the last thing on our list to complete our birds study...we adopted a bird.  For those of you who don't know, I can't remember if I mentioned it on the blog or not, Gavin was raising money to adopt a bird.  He wanted to adopt an eagle and we were going to go through the National Wildlife Federation.  The last couple of weeks we have been discussing this plan however because Gavin wanted to actually adopt a bird and have the money be used for that bird.  When you 'adopt' a bird with NWF the money goes into their main fund and you adopt it in name only.  So, we decided to look elsewhere and see what we could find.  After some searching we found a wildlife rescue organization in Kansas City that rescues all animals and tries to release them back into the wild but some animals never recover enough from their injuries to be rereleased. They also receive no government funding and rely on private donations.  So, today we adopted Mesa, a peregrine falcon (we couldn't afford the eagle).  Anyway, if you adopt a specific animal the funds go to provide food and care for that animal which made Gavin happy.  Mesa has a fractured wing.

The day after we finished reading about birds Gavin asked if we could learn about bees.  I've given it a few weeks so we could get through the end of the school year and was going to wait until next week to start but the kids are already getting restless.

Yesterday Gavin made a bee headband...we will use this for an activity later.  I made one for Austin too but he wasn't really into wearing it. 

Today Gavin made a bee painting.  He did a great job.  He thought we should send it to an art museum so they could display it...I'm not sure it's that good, but it's one of the best paintings he has done.

We were having a great time until Austin got mad because I wouldn't put any more paint on his plate.  Notice he's still painting - that's because he had lots of paint on his plate already they were just mixed together and he wanted new paint.

Gavin painted his hive and then used his thumbprint to make bees around the hive.  While we waited for the paint to dry Gavin did a 'b' and 'p' beginning sounds worksheet and a telling time to the hour worksheet.

After Gavin's painting dried, he used black marker to trace the outline of the hive and add stripes, feet and antenna to each of the bees.

Here's his finished painting.  The hive is in a tree and the blue is sky.

Here is Austin's painting.  He was happy again!

I also put together a bee themed sensory bin for Austin, although Gavin likes it just as much.  It has rice (I was too lazy to dye it yellow!), black beans, yellow and black pom poms, yellow popsicle sticks, yellow foam flowers, fake bees, yellow and black marbles, a yellow bowl and yellow spoons.  The boys played with it a lot today.

We read two books about bees today.

This book is not so much about bees but fun to read anyway.  It's the chapter from the original Pooh chapter book where Pooh tries to fly up to get the honey from the bees in the tree (and the inspiration for our painting).