H is for Hive: Frozen Beehive Excavation

Welcome to the eighth day of the ABC's of Nature series hosted by School Time Snippets. We are excited to join an awesome group of 26 bloggers to bring you 26 days of Nature themed activities! To go along with our current Bug Unit, we chose H is for Hive. K has been loving exploring insects this past week, and I just knew he would love this super fun Frozen Beehive Excavation activity. 

To create our "hive", I dyed some water with yellow food coloring and placed our large plastic bee in the center of the water in a large bowl. I then froze it overnight. In the morning, I ran warm water on the outside and popped our hive out. It looked great, and K couldn't wait to dig in! 

I provided him with a small meat tenderizer and a baby bottle filled with warm water. Please exercise caution when your child is using kitchen tools. This tenderizer is small enough that K can control it one handed, and it was the perfect size for him. 

Before we started, we sang "Bringing Home My Baby Bumblebee". Then I showed him the hive and we talked about where bees live. Then we went to work getting the bee out. This is a great teamwork activity and would work wonderfully with siblings! 

K loved squeezing the warm water out of the bottle and onto the bee. 

Chipping away at the ice with the tenderizer was by far his favorite though. I was so impressed by his strength and how well he utilized this tool properly. He was so determined to set the bee free! 

We also talked about the temperature and texture of the ice hive. He used his hands to try to yank the bee out, but he wasn't quite ready yet. 

As we worked together, the ice began to break away in chunks. K was fascinated with the slippery texture and the jewel-like consistency of the yellow food coloring paired with the clear water.

Here he is telling me that the ice is "brrrr cold"!! 

The different stages of the bee emerging from the hive were really fun to observe. At one point, we almost had the bee free and K could pick the full chunk up to observe.

When we finally got him out, we examined his different parts. K was fascinated by his translucent wings. 

He engaged in some pretend play with the bee for quite a bit, making him fly around and giving the bee a couple of smooches!

We spent the rest of the time participating in some water and ice play! K loved stacking the chunks of ice in the cup that we had filled with warm water. We counted the different ice chunks and talked about the color. As we played, we were able to observe some real bees buzzing around our heads. 

We had an awesome time excavating our frozen beehive, and participating in this fun series! Don't miss all of the other letters of the alphabet over at School Time Snippets. 

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