Virtual STEAM Ahead

Bees!

Bees are very important to our world. How important? One third of our global food supply is pollinated by bees! Today's STEAM project focuses on these busy helpers.

We humans depend on bees! Bees help spread pollen which fertilizes the growth of fruits and seeds. Bees keep plants and crops alive and, in turn, those sustain us. Sadly, the bee population in many places is decreasing due to risk factors such as insecticides, pollution and climate change. How can you help the bees? A good place to start is to ask a parent if you could help create and care for a yard that bees would like to visit. Bees like flowering vegetables, scented herbs and certain flowers like bee balm, coneflowers and zinnias.

To read more about bees and bee-friendly gardens, visit Hoopla, enter "bees" in the search field and click on "Kids".

To honor our bee friends, let's make a bee!

Supplies Needed:

• scissors
• small paper plates
• small bowl or circle for tracing
• yellow and black yarn
• white, black and red paper, poster board or felt
• wiggly eyes, any size you prefer
• hole punch
• tape
• glue

INSTRUCTIONS
1. Place your small bowl or circle on the back of your paper plate
and trace. You’ll want to make sure there is some room on the
outside of the circle for your holes so don’t make the circle too
big.
2. Poke your scissors into the center of your paper plate and cut
out the traced circle.

3. Make holes around the perimeter of the circle with your hole
punch.
4. Cut off a section of yellow yarn to thread through the holes.
Wrap a small piece of tape around the end of the yarn for easier
lacing through the holes. The amount you’ll need will depend on
how big your paper plate is. The sections we used were about
10-12 feet.
5. Pull the yarn up a hole in the back of the paper plate to the
front of the paper plate. Then continue sewing down and up the
holes around the circle until you reach the end of your yarn. Cut
the yarn off and tape the end of the yarn onto the back of your
paper plate.

6. When making your bee, you’ll also need to thread a piece of
black yarn and use it to sew stripes across your bee body. We
made about 2-3 passes through each hole in our stripes to give
them some thickness.
7. Cut out two bee wings out of your white paper or felt. Also, cut
some black paper for antennae. Glue into place.

8. Finish your paper plate insect sewing craft by gluing on your
wiggly eyes and bee wings with your glue.

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