Bees
A Hands-on Science Unit
by Laurie Nakauchi-Hawn
A
fter learning about seeds and plant- “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” and
ing a garden, my first graders were substituted the words head, thorax, abdo-
curious about the insects they saw. They men) for the parts of an insect. This served
loved scooping dirt, digging holes, and as an excellent reminder of the parts of
choosing seeds to plant. But for them, this the bee for labeling a bee diagram. I also
was only an introduction to many other asked the children what parts on our dia-
interesting topics. One insect in particular gram were not included in the song. We
caught their attention. So we decided that discussed the stinger and proboscis, words
our next step would be to study bees and a few of the first graders provided!
pollination. With knowledge of the parts of the bee,
the next lesson covered two concepts, how
bees see and eat. I set this lesson up as two
Insect questions
stations. The first had color photos show-
ing the colors we see and the ones bees
Since children love bugs, our unit started
see. Students examined the photos and
with a chart about what they already knew
filled in a chart about how our perceptions
and what they wanted to learn. Their ques-
of colors are the same as and different
tions ranged from “What is an insect?”
from bees’ perceptions. They explored fact
to “How do insects see?” To introduce
cards about the number of eyes a bee has.
the bee unit I read them the story The
They also looked through a kaleidoscope
Honey Bee and the Robber by eric Carle.
and prism to learn about how insect eyes
This piqued their curiosity further and
are faceted.
we expanded our list to include questions
about bee occupations. The kids were
especially interested in the guard bee.
Simulating pollination
During our next science meeting I
taught the children a song (to the tune of At the second station, students ate like
bees. We looked back at our diagrams to
Model of a honeybee
see the bee’s proboscis and discussed what
bees eat. Many children were surprised
to find out that the bees do not eat honey
or pollen, but instead eat nectar. I showed
them how nectar is liquid in a flower
(using an example of the cup and flower
they would later make), and pollen is pow-
der, like powdered creamer.
each child used a 4"x 4" piece of col-
ored construction paper to draw and cut
out a flower with a small hole punched in
the center. This flower was placed on top
of a cup filled with about an inch of water
to represent the nectar of a flower. The
children held their straws, pretending to be
bees using their proboscises to drink the
nectar. They would use these same flowers
for the next lesson on pollination.
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