Year 2 Hexagon Heaven & Bee Disco

 Today we found out how bees are mathematicians.  Did you know honey bees can make perfect hexagons?  We brainstormed all the shapes we knew.  Did you know some shapes fit together perfectly?  That's called tessellation. By looking carefully at some honey comb we discovered that bees make hexagons out of wax that tessellate perfectly. 

We used popsicle sticks to make our own hexagons and then joined with others to tessellate our hexagons across the floor.

Afterwards we drew a hexagon tessellation in our bee books.  Amazing maths work Year 2!!

For our brain break we went to the Mara Kai to check out if there were any flowers for the bees.  We saw pansies, stock, borage and rosemary flowers.

We worked so hard we had time to complete a fun bee wordsearch.

We also learnt about how bees communicate by dancing and come up with our own bee dances in groups.

Lastly we finished off our Bee Books as we are moving on to a new topic about birds next term.  Look out for the Bee Books coming home.

Year 2's Seed Packets for the Bees

Ms Daniel brought in some grapefruit from her tree at home.

Thank you bees, for pollinating our fruit trees.  

How can we help the bees?

Callum: "We don't pick the flowers."

 Zoe: "We could help the bees by planting more flowers."

Lily: "We can plant more flowers."

Marty: "We can scatter seeds around."

Leon: "We can make them a garden."

After reviewing the incredible job that bees do to pollinate our plants and trees, we decided to thank them by planting flowers at home.  To transport our seeds, we created beautiful seed packets. 

 Good luck growing at home, Year 2!

Mackenzie: "I think it is good to be helping the bees."

Jacob: "If you want to take care of the earth, you can take care of the bees."

Grace: "We are planting so the bees can have food."

Daniel: "I wonder what colours they are going to be? "

Year 2 Bees and Pollination

 Prior Knowledge - Why are bees so important?

Felix R "They pollinate flowers to turn them into fruit"

Liam "Seeds are inside the fruit"

Peter “They make honey”

Luke “They make fruit. They pollinate.”

Year 2 learnt about how bees move pollen from flower to flower while they are drinking nectar.  When the flower has pollen from another flower, it can turn into fruit or seeds. Without bees, we wouldn't have so many fruits, plants and trees.

We created flower models complete with pollen and sticky stigmas, then we acted out pollination with pipe cleaner bees.

We explored the school flowers to see if we could find the sticky stigmas and pollen anthers. 

Next time we’re going to make seed packets to grow our own flowers.

Yr 2 How do Bees make Honey?

Today, Year 2 reviewed all that we've learnt so far about our VIP Bees.  Next, we found out how bees make honey with a Mystery Science lesson.  Did you know they spit the nectar out to each other, so the nectar mixes with enzymes in their tummies?

We acted out bees making honey and then recorded the sequence in sentences.  We had time for a quick maths colouring page before our special guests arrived.

Claire  & Claire from the Youth Project visited to show us how we can spread kindness in the community.  We talked about how kindness includes being friendly, generous and considerate.  We want the world to be a kinder place, so we made love bugs for people to find in our local libraries.

Next time we're looking forward to sampling some of our Waka Honey and exploring the importance of pollination.

Year 2 Learn about the Parts of a Bee

 First, we revisited our learning about the bee life cycle. Then we went on a walk to check out how our bees are doing. As it is winter, the bees are not as active at the moment. 

Next, we walked around to see if there were flowers on our trees for our bees. We found some, but not enough. Flowers are very important for our bees.

Room 11 saw 5 different types of flowers in the Mara Kai for our bees.  They need variety in their diet.

Do you know that without the bees, 1/3 of our fruit and vegetables would not exist?

We had a taste of the mandarins from Ms Everitt's tree...

Mackenzi: Ï didn't have a pip in mine!"

Eva: "I only had one pip."

Cern: "It is sooooooo sweet."

Greyson: "It tasted a bit sour, but inside it was sweet."

Daniel: The mandarin smelled really good."

Zara: "The mandarin smelled a little bit sour."

Richie: "I had 2 pips in my Mandarin, and I swallowed them both!"

Thank you Bees, for the Mandarins!

Then we labelled the parts of the bee and drew our own bees.

Lastly, we played a fun dice game to race to create our own bee with all the body parts.

Next time, we're looking forward to learning about how bees make honey.