Your kids will love labeling the parts of a honey bee lego activity. Also, look at my Fascinating and Fun Honey Bees Unit Study and Lapbook for Kids.
Bees are fascinating little creatures from how they create their honeycombs to maximize space, to how they know to fan the hive to keep it cool.
Bees are used in so many ways than just the delicious honey they produce.
We use beeswax in cosmetics, candles, as a coating, and bee venom is used as a holistic treatment.
Because they are so very important to our world as pollinators I think it is important to educate our children about them from the beginning.
Labeling the Parts of a Honey Bee
If you’ve been homeschooling awhile you know that hands-on activities really drive home information in a fun way that really makes it stick, often better than any worksheet could.
Since most kids love LEGO, I thought that an activity using them would be a hit with the kids and turn an ordinary and possibly boring homeschool lesson into something unique and fun.
Turns out I was right- The kids loved doing this project and I hope you and yours will too!
Grab a big bucket of LEGOS and a handful of bee books and let’s get started.
A LEGO baseplate.
Assorted LEGO bricks
- Cardstock paper
- A book or printout of parts of a bee
- Pen or marker
Books for Bee Unit Studies
8 Honey Bees Unit Study Resources & Books
Add some of these fun resources to your bees unit study or spring unit study.
One part science, one part cultural history, and countless parts fascination, Bees: A Honeyed History celebrates the important role that these intriguing insects have played in our ecosystem throughout the ages, and today.
Part history book, part handbook, and part cookbook, this illustrated tome covers every facet of the ancient hobby of beekeeping, from how to manage hives safely to harvesting one’s own honey, and ideas for how to use honey and beeswax. Detailed instructions for making candles, furniture polish, beauty products, and nearly 100 honey-themed recipes are included. Honeybees, which are critical in the pollination of popular US produce such as almonds, apples, and blueberries, are actually not native to the Americas. The honeybee that you see dancing from flower to flower in farms and gardens originated in Europe. The introduction of the honeybee began with European colonization of the Americas; before that, wild native bees, other insects, and some birds and mammals pollinated the native flowers of the continent. The honeybee’s ability to pollinate crops, produce honey, and be easily domesticated precipitated the growth in beekeeping all over America.
Follow the flight of a honey bee as she searches for nectar to sustain her hive and, along the way, pollinates flowers to produce seeds and fruits. Nature lovers and scientists-to-be are invited to explore the fascinating life of a honey bee.
Honey Bees are fascinating creatures which have been kept by humans for centuries. Now you can explore the life cycle of the honey bee without being stung. Watch as it grows from an egg, to a larva, and to a pupa before finally emerging as a mature adult.
Always a favorite when doing any kind of nature study, there are a few pages that cover different types of bees, common nectar sources, and bee anatomy. If you don't have this set already I cannot recommend it enough for nature studies.
One of the companion books to Nature Anatomy, the farm version covers all parts of farming, machinery, and crops but it also caught my eye because it even covers Beekeeping for aspiring beekeepers. It goes over bee terminology, parts of a bee, the parts of a hive, types of bees, flower parts, and beekeeper essentials. These books really put a lot of info into compact parts.
Why do beekeepers use smoke machines when collecting honey? Can a bee really sting only once? Why do bees "dance"? In concise, detailed text and abundant illustrations that range from the humorous to the scientific, Charles Micucci offers a wide-ranging and spirited introduction to the life cycle, social organization, and history of one of the world's most useful insects.
When the Magic School Bus turns into a beehive, Ms. Frizzle's class learns firsthand about how workers, drones, and the queen bees live together. Readers will be abuzz with knowledge as they discover how honeybees find food; make a comb, honey, and beeswax; and care for their young, all from the bee's perspective.
Hands-on Activity for Honey Bee
You can make this as simple or as involved a LEGO build as you like depending on the age and ability of the child.
Using the larger Duplo blocks to create a simple bee and let your child point out the various parts of a bee as you call them out is another idea.
Provide your child with a book or printout on the parts of a bee to use as a model and a variety of LEGO to build their bee model.
Give them a large variety of LEGO bricks to build with, I love this starter box for kids just beginning a LEGO collection.
I keep a box for each kid separate from all the other LEGO in the house just for school projects like this.
Have them start with creating a head, thorax, and abdomen using yellow and black bricks.
Add wings using white bricks.
For older children you can differentiate forewing and hindwing if you like.
Use long single row black bricks to create 3 sets of legs.
Finally add eyes and antennae.
Hands-on Science: Labeling the Parts of a Bee
Cut small strips of cardstock and add the names of whichever bee parts you would like your child to identify.
Give them the strips and let them locate each part on their LEGO bee, with so much interaction while building and then labeling they are sure to retain much of the information they get from this build.
Here are some additional bee activities to try
- Create a honey bee lapbook.
- Create the life cycle of a bee using LEGO again.
- Pick up some local honey and try it right out of the jar as well as in a recipe or two.
- Make a honeycomb by cutting down toilet paper tubes and bending each ring into a hexagon, glue each together to create any size you like.
- Paint a watercolor bee or beehive.
- Thumb through one of the books listed below and learn some more bee information-make flashcards.
- Plant flowers in your yard to help support the bees, very important pollinators.
- Make a mason bee house to put up outdoors.
- Preschoolers can work on fine motor skills by transferring “pollen” (yellow pom poms) from one flower (colorful bowl) to another with tongs.
- Research all the products we get from bees.
- Give your child a bee themed writing prompt for handwriting, creative writing, and grammar practice such as “ What if there were no bees?” or “ The day I turned into a bee…”.
You’ll love these other hands-on science activities.
- Fascinating and Fun Honey Bees Unit Study and Lapbook for Kids
- 41 Easy Hands-on Faith-Neutral Science Activities for Kids
- Hands-On Science: Handprint and Fingerprint Activity
- Easy Hands-on Science: Animal Camouflage Activity Hunt
- Easy Hands-On Science: Label the Atom Playdough Activity
- EASY Hands-on Earth Science: Fun Water Testing Kit
- Hands-On Science: Label the Skeleton System Activity
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