Buzz Buzz Busy Bees

Kids and families are very busy during the summer months. Lots of time is spent outdoors, traveling, and more. It can be more difficult for everyone to work on skill building. It is important to make sure that everyone understand that they must put time in during these weeks so there is not as much regression. Bees are a wonderful way to approach this subject. Bees are constantly in motion, but they help their hive community with multiple tasks.

Take time to learn about honey bees and connect it to life for kids. Start by reading some books about the busy little insects.

• Honeybee’s Busy Day by Richard Fowler
• The Beeman by Laurie Krebs
• The Very Greedy Bee by Steve Smallman
• When the Bees Fly Home by Andrea Cheng
• You Wouldn’t Want to Live Without Bees by Professor Alex Woolf
• Little Honey Bee by Jane Ornes
• The Honey Makers by Gail Gibbons

After learning about bees, take some time to talk about the importance of putting in the work for your community and family. Bees are great role models. Now introduce students to the take home hive of activities. The mini honeycomb shaped hive is made ahead of time on a piece of poster board. Connect multiple toilet tissue tubes which are painted honey color to the poster. Pinterest has several great examples to model this, along with several other activities. The space inside of the hive will be filled with in home connector activities that are fun to do and work on skill building.

Have sheets made ahead of time to explain to families what the rationale of each activity is and how they may assist their child. Include translations to assist multilingual individuals. Some activities may include a pouch of things to help with what is needed. Talk through the expectations with kids before they take them home. Activities may include a writing assignment about feelings for those working with a counselor.  This could be using sparkle gel pens and stickers to express their feelings when writing. Physical therapy students may practice flying around like a bee outside with their wings up spinning in certain directions every day.  If they are working on core balance include ways for them to incorporate this into the time. Speech and language options could include buzzing around the house looking for key sound words to fill a mini hive to bring back to the next session.

The sky is the limit with this activity. If it goes well it could be adapted to continue use during the school year. Kids will be more likely to participate and practice if they are included in the planning process. Chat with them about additional activities they would like to see in the hive moving forward.