Be Buzzy Like A Bee: Second Graders Learn All About Bees

Students were buzzing about their hands-on experience to learn more about bees at Cumberland Head Elementary School.

Elyse Bennet from The Adirondack Experience, The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake presented to second graders about bees. Students learned about the history of beekeeping, different types of bees and ways to help bees pollinate.

Students were shown an old photograph of the Adirondacks, and they were asked how food was made sweet when sugar wasn’t readily available. This led the students into learning about honey, and the importance of honey.

“I liked that we got to touch and feel the things she brought,” Second grader Luke Thornton said.

Bennet also showed students beekeeping materials like the fogger, the bee suit and apiary, which is where bees live.

“Her presentation had a really god combination of visuals and hands-on activities to keep the students engaged,” CHES Special Education Teacher Jessica Rock said.

Students loved being able to get out of the classroom and learn something new.

“We tied learning about bees into the start of spring,” CHES Second Grade Teacher Tiffani Light said. “Students love to pick the dandelions on the playground, so we talked about how flowers and pollinate are important for the bees.”

Students also learned about the life cycle of bees, which is like what they are doing in science now. Second graders are watching and caring for chicken eggs, and they are learning about the cycle the eggs go through before hatching.

“I think that anytime we can bring life sciences and sciences, in general, for kids really helps foster their love for learning,” Light said. “They can see how it affects the world around them, and they have inquisitive minds about what they are learning.”

Bennet also told students about pesticides and how bees have been endangered using them.

“They can learn about their human effect on the world around them,” Light said.

The students learned a lot about pollination, and Bennet had them complete a great hands-on exercise to demonstrate how a bee would pollinate a flower.

In groups, students had to go over to a specific flower color and collect a magnet, which represented a piece of pollen. Then they rolled a dice, and whatever number it landed on, they had to go back to their team and flap their “wings” that many times. Then teammates had to go to the color flower that corresponded with the number and leave their pollen.

By the end of the exercise, students could visually see how the different colored magnets, or pollen, was distributed to the flowers.

“The pollination game at the end was the funniest part,” Second grader Jonathan Julien said. “It was also really fun just learning about bees.”

This was a great collaboration with The Adirondack Experience, The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake to broaden students' understanding to life sciences.