A Bumble Bee Craft
This week was a bzzzzzzzz-y one.Alright, I got my bad dad joke out of the way. Moving on.This idea stemmed from one student's .... fixation ... yeah, let's go with the word fixation, on bumble bees. During our most recent trip to Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, he called out for bumble bees non-stop while walking in the garden, like a boy trying to call a pet dog home.You can imagine the look on his face when we finally spotted some in a field of tulips. And in an attempt to elicit that same facial reaction, we decided to collaborate on a bumble bee craft activity.Over the past two weeks, we've been hoarding toilet paper rolls from home and the school bathrooms. You may want to enlist your custodian to help you if you choose to move forward with this Springtime activity.We painted the toilet paper rolls yellow the day before our scheduled push-in lesson (Special shout out to our art teacher who is always willing to lend us whatever supplies she has on hand. This week, that included paint and brushes.)The following morning we gathered our materials which included:
- yellow toilet paper rolls (one for each student and an extra as a model)
- small, medium and large sized googly eyes
- mini pom-poms (multi-colored or black depending on your preference)
- kid-friendly scissors
- elmer gue
- tape
- strips of black construction paper (to be used for stripes and stinger)
- markers (to draw mouth)
We started off the session by having the kids watch a YouTube video called Bumble Learns to Fly. We went on to introduce a picture of a bumble bee and label target vocabulary (i.e. body, head, stripes, wings, antennae, stinger.)We prompted the students to answer questions about bees, point to their own body and head, produce bee sounds and imitate words like antennae, wings and stinger with their arms and fingers.After the initial lesson conducted in a circle, we transitioned to the tables where the students were handed visual schedules on how to make a bumble bee. The visual schedules are now available on TpT in English and Spanish.The kids had a great time and it is always a joy to see how creative they are in making their projects unique while still following directions. Check out the final results.
