This year we have been supporting the Bumblee Bee Conservation. Bumblebee Bee Day is a much loved day by our Muddy Puddle Teachers and here are some top tips to make the day even more exciting while raising awareness of the care and protection we need to give these awesome pollinators!
Here are some of the official sites also celebrating this Buzzy Day that you may find useful:
Bee-tastic Tip One
Before the event, get gardening and have a specific area in your school or nursery that is untouched and has specific plants that bees just love. Call it the ‘Bee Restuarant’ and that we would not walk all over our food so why would we do that on the Bee’s food. Ensure these are planted in February so they make an appearance on Bee Day or plant the year before. Some of the Bee’s favourites dishes include:
- Lavender.
- Viper’s Bugloss
- Mahonia.
- Hawthorn
- Bluebells
- Crab Apple Trees
- Ox-eye daisy.
The Bee Conservation also have a great guide on Getting
Started and a Community Planting Guide) which includes monthly bumblebee menus to provide food for bees all through the season! You can also find lots of resources and information on their Bee the Change page here.
The children could then monitor and check how many Bees visited the restaurant that day. Or make little chairs and tables to go in their Bee’s restaurant.
Bee-Tastic Tip Two
Dress up yellow or ask the children to have a go at home making a homemade Bee suit. Using a permanent marker on an old T. Shirt for the stripes and look carefully at the features of a bee and even have a go at making their tail! It is important to take misconceptions from children of Bees and that they can sting. This does often filter through children from an adult. So explain to them Bees do not try and sting us, if we see them it is because they are on their way to a flower to get their lunch so step away and let them through, try not to flap or scare them. Calmly walk away.
Bee Tastic Tip Three
Do some natural Bee BIG Art while collaboratively working together. First, make the shape of a Bee using sticks on your school grounds all helping one another together as the Bees do. Then fill the colours of the Bee in using natural resources, if there is no naturally yellow leaves that have fallen, look to using scrap pieces of fabric, do not take from a plant that is still alive.
Bee-Tastic Tip Four
There are plenty of resources online that will help you create some pockets of learning that also have great links to the curriculum. For instance, we do an Outdoor eBook themuddypuddleteacher.co.uk/how-do-bees-care-for-us-outdoor-ebook/ that helps you to take comprehension outside while learning all about bees and doing some bee art. We also have plenty of free tips and blogs for you.
Also at the Bee Conservation, they have developed a series of educational tools including
Short Youtube videos, teacher packs and lesson plans which are freely available on their website to be used by teachers:
https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/learning-zone/curriculum-resources-for-schools/
Aimed mainly for Secondary School but easily adapted.
Plus they have a fabulous Learning Zone on their website which also features lots of other activities and educational resources for children of all ages, which are freely available to families.
Bee- Tastic Tip Five
If you have missed Bumble Bee Day then do not worry! You can always have a Bee Day whenever you want! Why not search for local Bee Keepers, there are always plenty about who can come in and give the children a talk. Maybe share the suit that there in and the children taste their honey.
Time to go out there and inspire the next generations to save those Bees!
Author: Sarah Seaman CEO The Muddy Puddle Teacher
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