Discover the importance of feeding bees- the numerous benefits it brings to honey bee colonies. And how supplemental feeding supports colony health, boosts honey production, promotes overall wellbeing
Don’t swat another fly until you read this informative article from Gardener’s Path about beneficial insects, and how they help to keep your garden healthy.
Upcycling and gardening go hand in hand with these garden decor ideas and quirky garden ideas using items from the thrift store!
Free Printable set of Flashcards with 20 Common Bugs and Insects. PDF Downloadable flashcards for young bug enthusiasts! A fun way (...)
Discover all the graphic resources created by Afaqcreate. Images, templates, videos, fonts, and much more.
A 3D printable bee craft for kids. Make a realistic model of a honey bee complete with anatomy labels using our printable template
Placing a bug abode in the garden increases the chances that beneficial insects will naturally visit. Here's how to design a bug hotel.
Get ready to learn about insects with these free insect printables and activities. Perfect for a young bug enthusiast or insect unit of study (...)
DIY insect hotels: what are they and why make one? When you put an insect hotel in your garden, you are actively welcoming these beautiful little creatures which are extremely beneficial for the wellbeing of all your garden plants. This DIY insect hotel, also known as a bug hotel
Bees & wasps are two creatures that are extremely similar, and to the normal eye the differences are hard to see. Here we'll look at the 4 main differences.
Buzz through spring with the Bee Pollination STEAM Activity! Now that more and more bees are coming out after the cold winter, it's the perfect time to teach children about how bees and flowers help each other out to accomplish each other's goals: Flowers getting pollinated and bees gathering nectar for honey. Children will enjoy flying their little bee buddies around and helping them gather pollen to deliver from flower to flower.
Making your own insect hotels can be very rewarding as a hobby gardener or nature enthusiast. The concept of insect hotels, also known as bee hotels or bug hotels, is becoming more popular now we understand the important role of insects. Without insects, the world will be a barren place and we humans will probably not thrive. Building your own insect hotel will help insects to survive and thrive again. At least when you do it the right way. Let's discuss 7 things you probably should know before you start building your next insect hotel. When you build your own
Bees are insects with wings. They’re crop pollinators, making them essential to Earth. Read the funniest bee puns for a good laugh. Most wild plants and crops depend on animal pollination.
A quick visual card to identify the good bugs vs bad bugs in your northeast garden. Use this guide to avoid removing important bugs.
I have learned that if the class is truly interested in something, they will use reading, writing, and math skills as they explore their interests naturally. I observe and listen closely to discover what they are interested in. Sometimes a book or story will spark an interest. Sometimes an interest is sparked by something a friend shared with the class. Sometimes I notice interests by listening to their stories and their play. Our last large group interest was sparked when one of our friends found an almost dead praying mantis. The kids were fascinated with it and wanted to look closer, observe, and find out more. Every time we went outside they wanted to look for insects! I set out some invitations for them to explore insects further. They quickly started looking through books and models of insects to see what they could find out. I started encouraging them to record what they noticed using different materials. One of their favorites was the book Microsculpture:Portraits of Insects by Levon Biss. It truly took a closer look at insects including closeups of legs, wings, eyes feet, etc. it was such a beautiful book. I set it out with materials for them to create their own beautiful portraits of insects showing what they noticed. They are starting to figure out how to try to spell unfamiliar words by writing the sounds they hear in words. They practiced labeling their insects here also. But the insects they got the most excited about were the ones completely covering our milkweed plants! They wanted to know all about them! We looked at a picture of one and made our thinking visible by recording what we saw, thought and wondered. Then we got our Entomologist tools, took them outside and found out everything we could about them! They were amazing and thorough Entomologists! We recorded everything we noticed and then put some of our information in the computer and found out they are called Milkweed bugs! We then did an observational drawing as Entomologists and used our writing skills to label what it is and some body parts. Here is the display outside our room showing everything we learned about them! The other insects all took a backseat to the milkweed bug! I could have done a traditional insect unit, but these kids noticed something in their environment where they could truly experience it, so I followed the direction they took our insect study. I often let the kids direct our curriculum! They show me what they want to learn and I follow their lead and learn along side them. They were much more involved, interested and excited about learning as we followed their interest. Also, this fell naturally into our science standards of living things and what they need! I can’t wait to see what other interests this group will have that we can dig deeper into! They are definitely bringing in leaves by the bucketful... Here are some other things going on in our classroom: We are still working on those fine motor skills! Our finger muscles need a lot of work! Stories are being created in all of the areas of our room as we learn about story making! Here they are encouraged to show math in an open ended way. At the moment they are working on the numbers 1-10, shapes, writing numbers to 10, counting objects and matching to the correct number, counting to 25, subitizing and patterns. They are also learning to notice math all around us and how we use it in our every day lives. Some Fall art inspiration with sunflowers. They drew pictures of Mrs. Coberly wearing Michigan State colors and wrote “Mrs. Coberly loves Sparty!” Then we decorated her door! They loved this! Unfortunately, the Buckeye/Spartan game did not end well for me! It has been a busy place filled with all kinds of learning!
Montessori-inspired insect themed learning activities and free printables aimed at children ages 3-6.
I don’t know if you follow me on pinterest, or even have a pinterest account, but if you do you will probably know that recently I have become a little bit obsessive with things for my garden that I think the boys will love. The weather seems to be getting better again, and hopefully it will stay that way, so we are ditching the blankets and indoor snuggles for playing outside and going crazy with our crafts, toys and outdoor accessories! Here are my 7 must have things for your garden to keep the kids entertained this summer! 1. Old plant pot? No silly, it’s a fairy house and garden! This image was taken from pinterest, I love the design of this little fairy garden, so easy to do and perfect for little ones to interact with nature and enjoy! You can find it on my exterior ideas pinboard. This is the easiest craft to do! Literally that old plant pot that you have ignored all winter, and then managed to pretend isn’t an eyesore in your garden over the last few weeks of spring is now a world of possibilities – at least as far as your kids are concerned! What we have been doing is collecting stones from all of our family trips, and then we are going to use some edible flowers (faires have gotta eat, ya know) from In the koop (you can read my post about them here) to decorate. The houses are super easy to make with twigs and bits of wood, but you could buy a small house for a fish tank or something and use that! Make it your own completely and just wait for the magic to happen! 2. Create a butterfly heaven! This was taken from the brilliant site the cards we drew – they have some wonderful home and garden tips on there! Both of my boys LOVE going to tropical gardens, be it at the zoo or elsewhere, and last year at the bottom of our street we had a plant that seemed to just drive the butterflies wild. It was great and they would spend ages (usually when I had an appointment and was in a rush – naturally) just looking and pointing and clapping at the butterflies. I think it is such a great idea, even something as simple as having a few bowls of sweet water in the middle of some butterfly attracting plants, will draw them in and then you will be able to put your feet up and enjoy the beautiful. Click the image for more tips and ideas of what will be the best plants to use! 3. Forget throwing out old oversized toys, up cycle them and create a plant pot! We all have those toys that drive us crazy because they are too big and such a pain in the house! Why not turn it into a plant pot!? I think it is pretty safe to say we all have those toys. Those toys. The ones that are huge, bash into things – firm favourites that always result in tears and then temper tantrums because they have been taken away. Wouldn’t it be a great idea to take that toy and turn it into a flower pot?! Give it a go before you decide to throw! 4. Every garden needs a bird house. Fact. There are 1000’s of different ways to make a bird house, you can use pretty much anything! Let your imagination go wild and follow the basic principles on this site. Living in the countryside we get our fair share of birds in the garden, but let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter where you live, you can’t be a parent and want a child friendly garden without having some way to attract some wildlife into the garden… birds are one of the easiest and most fun animals to attract into the garden. Click the image to see a tutorial on making your own, with 1000’s of different styles and uses for random household objects! 5. No Mama, paddling pools are sooo out. Water pillows are in! Roo thought it was so much fun! He had such a blast ‘finding fishes’. You may remember my post (you can read it here) about giant water pillows. This is something that everyone should have in their garden, it is way more fun than a paddling pool and a thousand times less likely to turn your garden into a muddy puddle when you empty it! Give it a go, you know you want to 7. Make a bug hotel, because kids love bugs! I know, I know – bugs, eww! But the fact remains, kids love bugs and they are so fascinating to learn from. This is from the brilliant learning landscape design and you can see a full tutorial on their site. Kids love bugs, its a fact. If you are a mama who cringes when you lift up a rock and see a plethora of things with too many (or too few!) legs, then this may not be your things, however if you can stomach it bug hotels are a great way for kids to learn about nature and the ones on this site are super stylish too! So that’s it! Do you have any of these awesome things in the the garden for kids? I can’t wait to get started with a few more of them in my garden, how fun 🙂 Harriet x
Are you wondering if insect hotels are good or bad? Dive into the pros and cons, get insect hotel ideas and inspiration, find out the reasons for installing an insect hotel in the garden, and get tips on finding the best site to place an insect or bug hotel. Learn how to support pollinators, bees an
Designer Boleslav Daska of DILNA HAMMER, creates a variety of little bee hotels for gardens as well as homes for butterflies and insects.
In this article, you will learn about the good and bad bugs that may inhabit our gardens and their effect on our plants. You will also find out how to attract beneficial organisms and choose plants that will help your garden thrive.
Insect ID Chart
Open-air colonies in regions with cold winters are not common, so they tend to receive a lot of attention. Here are examples from both side of the country.
Get ready to learn about insects with these free insect printables and activities. Perfect for a young bug enthusiast or insect unit of study (...)
We did some research and found some great ideas and tutorials to help you create DIY wasp traps and other wasp solutions for your backyard and garden.
There's a lot of info out there about planting pollinator gardens, but what are the best plants for beneficial insects who aren't pollinators?
We have a new website please visit us at: www.beesinyourbackyard.com
Growth Stages of the Honey Bee (www.geochembio.com) Social Structure of the Honey Bee The worker bees are female bees who normally do not lay egss. …
Spring is buzzing with insects and it's the perfect time to build a Bug Hotel! Look around for recycled materials and gather natural materials from your yard.
FYI, "meat bees" are actually wasps. Yellow jacket wasps. Bees are vegetarian, and are not aggressive. Late in the summer we see lots of wasps. When other food sources (nectar and insects) for wasps dry up and decline, wasps come more aggressively to our picnics and BBQs.&n
Make your own bug hotel using natural materials to attract ladybugs, bees, and other beneficial insects to the garden.
