I’m a preschool teacher to 21 truly insane individuals. They’re all out of their minds in their own special ways, and it is my job to help guide them through this post-toddler consciousness so that hopefully they come out the other side as compassionate, educated, fresh-faced little conflict resolvers.
Because our school is a NAEYC accredited center, we create our lesson plans using emergent curriculum–or basing our projects on the interests of the children. The theory is that if you teach what the children are naturally drawn towards, the learning will be that much more effective.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to talk a child off a ledge when a bee flew by. They come up to me running and screaming and flailing about, then I’m forced to utter that famous childhood mantra, “Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.” I usually throw in something about Ferdinand, too. But no matter how many times I promised the kids the bees weren’t going to hurt them, they were still consistently terrified. So, I figured I’d teach them about bees–what they do, how they do it, what their babies look like, that there’s a queen(!)–and hoped their fears would lessen. And whodathunk, it worked! Instead of, “OMG A BEE,” it was, “Look, Ms. Emily, the bee wants pollen!”
This is one of the projects we did during our several-week long unit on honey bees. It’s a life-sized beehive with larva (cut up white straws curled up in the honeycomb), anatomically correct drawings of adult bees, a queen (she’s in the hive, wearing a crown, naturally), pollen packed into the cells (the orange circles), and honey (the yellow cellophane). As we learned about each of these things, we added it to our hive. We even had a local honey producer give us a chunk of real honeycomb for the kids to study.
To finish our unit, I thought it’d be a cool to do some cooking with honey. It was amazing how the kids had a whole new appreciation for honey compared to when we started. Half of them bring granola bars for breakfast, so I thought I could teach them how to make their own, and honey lends itself perfectly to that. We used this recipe, doubling it and subbing out the peanut butter for Nutella. The kids did all the work while I sat around and supervised to make sure there were actually M&M’s left for the recipe at the end, since they snuck them every chance they got. The granola was truly delicious. Thanks, bees!
The Portly Vegetarian 
