Five in a Row - The Bee Tree

 We rowed "The Bee Tree" by Patricia -- this week. We've read this book before, and it's such a fun book to read aloud. A girl named Mary Ellen is bored by reading her book and would rather go out and play. Her grandfather takes her on an adventure to find a bee tree, with a sweet reward of honey at the end, and teaches her that reading is the same kind of adventure. We kept this row simple with a focus on bees and pollination, onomatopoeias, and geography terms. Some weeks call for simple and this was one of them!

Monday:

We read the book and then read a book called "Honeybees". We talked about the different jobs of the different types of  bees and then completed a few worksheets. The first one described the three types of bees: worker, drone, and queen. The next one listed six different jobs of the worker bee (and there are more than six, I just had them choose six). We also did some copywork from scriptures that talk about honey - Proverbs 16:24 and Psalm 19:10.

Tuesday:

We read the book again and then read "The Honey Makers." There was similar information in the book, but also some new information and fun facts. The boys color-coded the parts of a bee (worksheet from here) and then drew the simplified life cycle of a bee.

Wednesday:

We skipped school Wednesday because I had a hair appointment that morning, and then we had so many errands to run and do that afternoon followed by church that evening.

Thursday:

We read the book and then talked about onomatopoeias. We briefly touched on this last year so it wasn't new to the boys. They filled in a simple worksheet where they had to name an object that could make the listed sounds. Then they drew and labeled eight onomatopoeias of their own.

We then talked about the geography terms in the book. The boys wrote them down along with their definitions and then illustrated each one.

Friday:

We read the book again along with the book "If You Were a Kid During the California Gold Rush." The woman "Klondike" Bertha in "The Bee Tree" had just gotten back from an expedition to the Yukon. I couldn't find a book for kids on the Klondike gold rush, so we just talked about the California Gold Rush. Then we looked in our World Books and read some information about gold. They then filled in a notebooking page with information about gold.

We then talked about pollination and they color-coded the parts of a flower.

Next they completed their book summary sheet, which we do for every book.

There were more activities I had wanted to do but we just didn't have the time to get to them. Next week we are going a little deeper with the book "Follow the Drinking Gourd."