Bees Crafts, Activities, Lessons, Games, and Printables

Free bee crafts, activities, rhymes, coloring pages, and printables

Bees Learning Centers

Block Center: Add silk flowers and bee counters. Let children make a meadow and build a bee house.

Dramatic Play Center: Cover a table with a yellow bed sheet to make a beehive. Place some silk flowers with yellow pom-poms around the outside of the hive. Let children pretend to be bees collecting nectar to bring back to the hive to make honey. The children can carry the yellow pom-poms to the different flowers to pollinate them. 

Bee Science Activities

Honeybees are social insects that live in hives. Like all insects, bees have six legs, a three-part body, a pair of antennae, compound eyes, jointed legs, and a hard exoskeleton. The three body parts are the head, thorax, and abdomen (the tail end). Bees eat nectar which they turn into honey. As the bees fly from flower to flower to collect nectar, pollen from many plants gets stuck on the bee's pollen baskets (hairs on the hind legs). The pollen gets rubbed off on other flowers which pollinates the flowers (fertilizing them and producing seeds).

There are three types of honeybees:

• the queen (who lays eggs)
• workers - females who gather food, make honey, build the six-sided honeycomb, tend eggs, and guard the hive
• drones - males who mate with the queen

Bee Life Cycle (Lesson, printables and activities available inside our KidsSoup Resource Library)

The queen lays an egg in a cell in the wax comb. The egg hatches into a worm-like larva, which eventually pupates into an adult bee. 

Bee Life Cycle Emergent Reader Booklet color and b/w (Printables and activities available inside our KidsSoup Resource Library)

Bees Fine Motor Skills Activities

Collecting Nectar and Pollen Activity and Printables (Printables and activity available inside our KidsSoup Resource Library)

Fly the Bees Back to The Beehive Tracing Worksheet (Printables available inside our KidsSoup Resource Library)

Bees Crafts

Flower Pot with Bee Craft
Decorate a plastic cup with bee and flower stickers. Plant some flower seeds. Glue a bee cut-out to the top a of a craft stick to make a plant stake.

Make bees wax candles.

Fngerprint Bees
Give each child a piece of paper. Let them draw or paint some flowers on the paper. Have them press their finger into paint or ink to make fingerprint bees. Decorate the bees with markers or crayons.

Beehive
Give each child a piece of card stock paper. Let children glue Honeycomb cereal onto the paper to make a beehive.

Balloon Bees
Blow up a small yellow balloon for each child. Have children draw eyes, mouth, and stripes with a black marker. Let children fly their "bees" around the room to the "Flight of the Bumblebee" by Rimsky-Korsakov.

Bee Coloring Page	Find Letter B,b	Bee Stick Puppets To Color	Bee Writing and Drawing	Bee Poster

 

Bee Learning Activities and Games

Bees and Flowers Number Recognition Game (Printable and activity available inside our KidsSoup Resource Library)
Make a bingo game board up with numbers 1-12.  Each square has a flower in it and the number in the center of the flower. Spray paint small pebbles yellow or use yellow glass gems and draw some black strips to make some bees. Call out a number and let children place a bee on the flower with the matching number.

Sight Words Flower Pollination (Printable and activity available inside our KidsSoup Resource Library)
Print out the flower patterns onto different colors of card stock paper and cut out. Write a sight word on each flower. Write the matching sight words on some cards. Place the word cards in a pile. Have children take turns turning over a card, read the word, and then place a bee counter on the matching flower. 

 

Beeline 
Print out the flower patterns onto different colors of craft paper and cut out. Write three different letters on the flowers and place the flowers all over the room. Have children buzz around the room like bees. Call out a letter and let the bees look for that flower with the letter, grab it, and bring it back to the circle. Repeat with the other two letters. Variation: Let children place the flowers in a beeline to the hive (circle). Let children buzz around and follow the beeline in to the circle.

Bee Science Activities

Plant a Bee Garden
With children, plant flowers that attract bees such as Black-eyed Susans, lantana, and zinnias and herbs such as lavender, basil, and sage.

What is honey?
Learn about honey. Visit PBS.org for some fun facts. 

Bees and Pollination Science Lesson and Activities (Lesson and activity available inside our KidsSoup Resource Library)

 

Bees Circle Games and Movement Activities

Queen Bee
Place some flowers on the walls. Children sit in a circle on the floor. The Queen Bee walks around the circle tapping children on the head and saying, "Buzz, buzz, buzz" with each tap. Each child tapped gets out of the circle and follows the Queen around. When the Queen calls, "Go make honey," those tapped and the Queen bee run off to the flowers on the wall. Choose a new Queen Bee.

Five Busy Bees 
Five little busy bees on a day so sunny (Hold up all fingers in one hand.) 
Number one said, "I'd like to make some honey." (Bend down first finger.) 
Number two said, "Tell me, where shall it be?" (Bend down second finger). 
Number three said, "In the old honey tree." (Bend down third finger.) 
Number four said,  "Let's gather pollen sweet." (Bend down fourth finger.) 
Number five said,  "Let's take it on our feet."  

Where Are My Bees?
To reinforce the parts of a bee, play this fun game with your children. Have children sit in a circle and let them pretend to be little bees in a classroom. Explain that the little bees will learn about their body parts and as soon as you ask them about their wings they can fly around the room until the school bell rings (demonstrate the little bell ringing).

Call out "Where are my bees?" Let children stand up and say, "Here we are!"
Ask, "Where's your head, little bees?" Children point to their heads and say, "Here's my head."
Ask, "Where's your thorax, little bees?" Children point to their chest and say, "Here's my chest."
Ask, "Where's your stomach, little bees?" Children point to their stomach and say, "Here's my stomach."
Ask, "Where are your wings, little bees?" Children flap their arms and say, "Here are my wings."

And let them fly around until you ring a bell to gather back in the circle.

Repeat with other body parts such as eyes, tongue, and legs. When you say,"Where are your wings, little bees?", let the little bees fly around in the room.

Bee Talk
Hide different silk flowers somewhere in your room. Eplain to children that bees communicate with each other using a dance. If a bee finds a source of food, the bee will fly back to the hive and tell the other bees how to find the flower. Choose one child to pretend to be a bee and instruct the child how to find the flower. Use words like forward, to the right, to the left, behind, above, under, etc. Then let the child go and find the flower and show it to the group.

Biddely, Diddely Bumblebee 
Go around the circle and tap one child on the shoulder. Repeat until all children have said their name.

Biddely, Diddely Bumblebee
Won't you say your name for me?"The child saiys his/her name. All children repeat it . (Lana)

Then say, ("Hi Lana!") and clap two times.

SNACKS

Note: Before you serve any honey snacks check for honey allergies.

Honey Milk Balls

1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup powdered milk
3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
Mixing bowl
Mixing spoon
Plate

What you do:

Mix honey, peanut butter, powdered milk, and graham cracker crumbs in mixing bowl. Form mixture into 2-inch diameter balls. Chill if desired and then eat.

Bee Songs and Rhymes:

Bumblebee on My Nose
(Tune: Jingle Bells)
Author Unknown

Bumblebee, bumblebee
Landing on my toes.
Bumblebee, bumblebee,
Now he's on my nose.
On my arms,
On my legs,
On my elbows.
Bumblebee, oh, bumblebee,
He lands and then he goes.

Bee Puppet Craft (Craft description and step-by-step pictures available inside our KidsSoup Resource Library)

 

Do You Like To Buzz?
(Tune: Do Your Ears Hang Low)
Author Unknown

Do you like to buzz?
Are you covered all in fuzz?
Do you call a hive a home
In the garden where you roam?
Do you know how to make honey?
Are your stripes a little funny?
Do you like to buzz?

Bees and Beehive Finger Play

Two Big Beehives
Author Unknown

Two big beehives (Hold out two fists.)
Closed up tight,
Protecting sleeping bees (Rest head on hands.)
All through the night.

When the morning sun (Make circle with arms over head.)
Shows its light,
Ten little bees (Hold out two fists.)
Take to flight. (Open fists and wiggle fingers away.)

 

Busy Bees Preschool Lesson Plan and Activities (Lesson, activities and printables available inside our KidsSoup Resource Library)