Preschool Fun: World Bee Day (Svetovni Dan Čebel)

Welcome to a new holiday!  May 20th is officially the first World Bee Day - started and promoted by Slovenian beekeepers.

Surprisingly, Slovenia is the bee capital of the world!  They have the largest number of beekeepers/capita!  Here is a link you can go to to find out more about it!  Here is the Facebook page for the World Bee Day, and here is their website.  Slovenia's honey is world-class, there is a long history of beekeeping, and as someone who likes bees, this is great news to me!

Honestly, on actual bee day, pregnancy got the better of me, but I've been making up for it since!  

For starters, here are some "bee" products we love.  These are not all local, Slovenian, but it is all part of supporting bees!

Products

1. Honey - duh.

Or, "med", in Slovene.  The bees in Slovenia are the Carnolian bees.  My personal favorite Slovenian honey is acacia honey.  YUM!  I put honey in my tea, on pork loin, in yogurt, and if you're having a traditional Slovenian breakfast, you have it on butter bread.  Yeah.  It's awesome.  Here's an added tip.  When you use honey, make sure you lick the knife or spoon - apparently that's approximately how much honey ONE bee makes in its life - you wouldn't want to waste a whole life's work!

2. Bee's Wax Candles

There's a stand at our local market that sells bee's wax candles, and we have a couple in our bedroom.  For a fun family activity, you can find "make your own candle" kits on amazon.com.  In school in Hungary, we had a "tradition and heritage" class, and we made bee's wax candles, and it was loads of fun!

3. Bee's Wrap 

This single-use plastic alternative food storage item is cotton fabric, which has been dipped in wax.  You can wrap it around things, or as a lid on a bowl.  It seals because of the warmth of your hands.  It is perfect for fresh produce, cheeses and bread.  Each wrap can be used for about 100 uses - you clean it with cold water and soap.  It's may seem a little expensive up front, but if you're truly cutting out that much plastic wrap and ziplocks, 1) it does end up being cost effective, and 2) obviously it's better for the environment.  I got a set of them for Christmas, and have LOVED using them!

4. Burt's Bees

Dan can't live without his Burt's Bees chapstick.  He's one of those people who has a car chapstick, a bedside table chapstick and a pocket chapstick.  He swears by it!  I've been using their belly butter against stretch marks, and we plan on using their products on our baby.  (On a side-note, their baby clothes, burp cloths and bedding are SO soft.  It's totally one of our favorite baby product brands.)

I showed Aidan each of these products, and we talked about how important bees are.  Without bees, there would be no fruit, no coffee... it would be a sad, sad world!

Activities

1. Plant a Bee friendly garden

When we lived in Florida, we sowed some seeds in the corner of the yard, in the hopes of growing some flowers for bees.  Unfortunately, it didn't quite pan out.  Here in Slovenia, we have a balcony, so we came up with this way to have an herb/flower garden.  There are some specific plants that attract bees, a few are: lavender, sage, thyme, oregano, rosemary and parsley.  Of course, there are pretty, colorful flowers you could use too, but we were more interested in a "functional" garden.

2. Recycled Bee Craft

 For this beeeee-autiful craft, you'll need two toilet paper rolls, yellow and black paint, newspaper, scissors and a black marker.  
First, you have your kiddo paint a toilet paper roll yellow (for the record, IKEA has great kids' art supplies).  Then, you have them paint a couple black stripes with black paint (I drew a faint line each time to help him stay straight all the way along).

Then, you help them cut out the wing shapes out of newspaper (watch those fingers!!), cut a strip of toilet paper off, cut it in half, have them paint them black, glue them in for antennae, and draw on a face.  Ta-da!!  So cute!








3. Bee Worksheets

 It can be (really) hard to get Aidan to sit down and color, or write, or do much of anything that wasn't his idea.  But he got a HUGE kick out of writing the B-s, and was super excited at how well it was going!

I found this, and a couple other sheets on pinterest.  I looked at them, and tried to pick the ones that were age-appropriate, and that I thought he would like.  This one had a fun, identify-the-letter section, that we used a stamp on, which of course made it tons more fun!

Snacks

1. Honey Lollipop

 Like I said, Slovenians love their bees and their honey.  There's this great Honey House shop in Ljubljana.  They have honey, honey spreads, candies, lotion, candles, etc.  I bought myself a blueberry money spread, and yes, it is as yummy as it sounds!

 I found this fun honey lollipop for Aidan...

which of course he loved!

2. Honey Comb Snack

For this snack, I used a banana, half a strawberry, some blueberries, and cashews.  Oh, and candy eyes. :)

We talked about how all of these foods (minus the candy eyes) need pollinators, like bees, and how important they are!

Watch

1. Wild Kratts Season 1 Episode 10 - Honey Seekers - this episode is about the honey seekers - lions, honey badger - in Africa, and of course the African killer bee!  So much fun!

2. Wild Kratts Season 1 Episode 32 - Flight of the Pollinators - this episode is all about what different pollinators there are - bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, etc.  I seriously always learn something new when we watch Wild Kratts!

3. More Than Honey - this is a really interesting documentary currently (or at least last time I checked) on Netflix. 

Toddler Fun, Week 2: Letter B, Number 2, Blue and SHARKS

Our sweet boy is in love with sharks!  He loves to read about them, watch them, visit them... on one occasion we were taking a boat out into the bay, and he was yelling at the top of his lungs, "Sharks!!! We're coming!!!"  So clearly, we had to have our very own Shark Week.

Week 2

Letter: B

Number: 2

Color: Blue

Animal: Sharks

Activities

1. Shark Day at the Jacksonville Zoo

This was actually two weeks ago, but well-worth the share.  Our zoo had a Shark Expo, which naturally we attended.  There were educational booths set up, one of which was Sharks 4 Kids, a group that will actually do a Skype chat with your child/class to teach them about sharks!! They also had a book called Norman the Nurse Shark, which my dear sweet husband bought without my even asking!  To top it all, they had face painting, which Aidan somehow (mostly) sat through!

2. Shark Letter Sorting 

 

 For this fun activity you'll need:
- A wipe container
- White paper, blue paper
- Bottle caps
- Hot glue, scissors, rubber cement, tape, sharpie

I took the top off a wipe box, and cut out the rubber from the top.  After that I cut a shark head shape out of the blue paper, then an oval for the mouth.  I then cut triangles out of the white paper, and 

glued and taped (for good measure) the teeth around the inside.  I drew black eyes on the side of its head.  I hot glued the face to the box.  I wrote A-s and B-s on white circles, hot glued those to some Snapple bottle caps, and voila!  I told him sharks love letters, and then I told him to feed the shark all the B-s, or A-s, and he did!  So much fun!

3. Visiting Nurse Sharks

This was a few weeks ago too, but it was too fun, and perfect not to share.  When we had a service in Key West, we visited the aquarium, where they had a nurse shark feeding!  Aidan loved it, and we had a great time!  The nurse shark tank is actually IN the gulf, which I found to be very cool.

Snacks

1. Apple Shark Teeth

I'm almost embarrassed to post this, because it's so simple, but that's the beauty of it!  I cut up an apple into triangles, and called them shark teeth.  It's super easy to pack, so it came with us  to our beloved indoor play space, Bay N Bee.

2. Shark Waffles

 I found this idea on Pinterest, and didn't really get a very good picture of it, but our little boy loved the whipped cream.  I made whipped cream, added blue food coloring, made some waffles cut one piece to look like a shark fin, and it's shark week breakfast!

Crafts

1. "B" is for blue

I realize that blue starts with a blend, but it went with our theme, and it's the same blend that's at the beginning of Aidan's last name, so I figured it would be okay.  ;)

So, I wrote out the letter B, and let Aidan trace it with blue finger paint.  It's messy, not pretty (which took everything in this mommy to leave be), but it's all his!

2. Shark silhouette 

 

I printed out shark silhouette, cut it out, glued it onto a canvas, and let Aidan paint all over it.  :)

3. Coloring Pages

I downloaded these coloring pages from that Sharks4kids.com I mentioned earlier.  Who doesn't love coloring pages?

Books and Media

We Read:

1. Norman The Nurse Shark by Jillian Morris is a very sweet tale about a nurse shark who gets lost, makes some friends and meets a boy who feeds him in the "shark sanctuary" in Bahamas.

2. Hark! A Shark! by Bonnie Worth is a very informative and yet fun book all about sharks!  It has some of our favorites - whale sharks, hammerhead sharks, dwarf lantern sharks, etc.  I do have to admit, I majorly talked up the library, only to get there and find it closed.  So, Aidan had a melt-down, so I said, "that's okay, let's go to the Target library"!  So, this is one of the new books we now own.  from the Target library.

3. The Octonauts and the Whale Shark is a book version of the episode of the same name.  Aidan loves this book, and it's fun to watch him get excited about the whale shark!

4. Good Night Atlanta by Adam Gamble.  We picked this book up when we went to the Georgia Aquarium.  It also has a whale shark, so you can imagine how excited we ALL get! :)

We watched:

1. Finding Dory - we finally went to see it in the movie theatre, and Aidan really liked it!  It had me in tears a couple times, so you know it was good!

2. Octonauts Season 1 Episode 21 - The Dwarf Lantern Shark - this episode is on Netflix (but there it's episode 25), or you can probably find it on youtube.  This episode is great because it features both a whale shark (the largest shark), and the dwarf lantern shark (the smallest).

3. Octonauts Season 1 Episode 31 - The Cookie Cutter Shark - also on Netflix.  This type of shark is also featured in the Hark! A Shark! book, which is pretty cool!

I'm sure you've noticed - Aidan wears his shark shirt A LOT.  It's his favorite, and really, who am I to stand between a boy and a shirt.