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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Bees, Hexagons, and a Honeycomb


Cardboard rolls make an awesome art supply. You can do SO much with them, including making a honeycomb. Here’s how we did it. Oh, and just because I like to be sneaky (which you probably deduced from the name of this blog), I didn’t tell my son what we were making; the suspense nearly killed him [hee hee].

Make marks to divide two paper towel rolls in thirds and using a pencil and ruler, draw two straight lines down the length of each roll. Then measure down the rolls every 2 centimeters, drawing lines across the width of the rolls.

Cut the rolls on these lines. Now, you’ll have tons of flattened football shapes. Fold each strip on the lines. We folded one forward and other backward, so our strips resembled the letter z. Make sure each of the folds is creased well.


Open up the z-shapes and form into hexagons. (This is when my son guessed what we were making.) When finished, begin gluing these hexagons together, adding a paper clip to secure the glued sides until dry. You’ll need LOADS of paper clips.


When this was done, we read The Bumblebee Queen by April Pulley Sayre. It taught us all about the queen bee and her colony. I’m not sure who learned more – me or my son!


Of course, with our honeycomb complete, it was time to make a queen. We used a mini clothes pin, stiffened yellow felt, black ribbon for stripes, googly eyes and a black pom pom for the head. I shaped two wings from silver pipe cleaners in the shape of the capital letter B. We used LOADS of white glue to adhere the wings and gave our bee lots of drying time.


To finish up the activity, my son read Dana Meachen Rau’s book Guess Who Stings, which taught us that a honeybee actually has five eyes (oops, our queen only has two!).


What a fun way to learn about bees, repurpose a few empty cardboard rolls, and discover that a hexagon has six sides!

19 comments:

  1. Good thing you had all those paper clips from yesterdays post...:) Cute idea!

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  2. You are amazing! I'm going AAh my creativity! Just love it! May be a perfect gift for my daughters honey bee class!

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  3. Oh my, what a fab project! and all that concentration! I am so impressed!

    Thank you for sharing on Kids Get Crafty!

    Maggy

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  4. My daughter saw this and as soon as we have two empty paper towel rolls (we're bugging the family for theirs as well!) we'll be making this. She didn't see the bee so that will be the surprise for her :) thanks for posting!!

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  5. I'm glad you all like this craft. Michelle: You can make a small honeycomb with just one paper towel roll if your daughter is anxious to get started. :)

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  6. Another fantastic idea! I may have to use this in my Jr. Church -- we've been talking about some "bee's" in there! (Bee helpful, Been Content, Bee Obedient etc. etc.)

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  7. What an amazing bee home you made! I love it!

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  8. Wow! Awesome honeycomb. What a neat idea this is to go along with studying bees.

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  9. That is absolutely fantastic! I love this idea and am going to get my three year old to have a go. He has been so interested in bee this summer! Thank you for linking up to fun sparks!

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  10. Love this activity! I'm doing a geometry unit this month so I featured this activity on my FB page (http://www.facebook.com/learningworkroom)and I plan to link to the activity from my blog too.
    Marcia :)

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  11. Those toilet paper rolls make the perfect honeycomb. Fantastic idea!

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  12. LOVE this! What a clever idea!!! Thanks so much for linking up to Made by Little Hands Mondays!
    Hope you are having a great Monday!
    Michelle
    www.delicateconstruction.blogspot.com

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  13. Another great activity! The Honeybee Man, is also a great picture book -- about beekeeping on rooftops here in New York City.

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  14. I did add you to my blog. Thought you might like the link
    Marcia :)
    http://learningideasgradesk-8.blogspot.com/2011/09/hexagons-honeybees-and-honeycombs.html

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  15. I so wish I had known about this when we did our Bee Theme!!! LOVE it!

    Thanks so much for sharing & linking to the Sunday Showcase! I hope to see you again this week!

    Bern
    http://momto2poshlildivas.blogspot.com/search/label/Sunday%20Showcase

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  16. I am so thankful for your blog-- and your kids are so blessed to have such a creative momma! This activity looks super neat and is perfect for our bee unit!

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  17. Thank you for this idea. I did it for an ESL class. I used staples to put it together quickly.

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