sarah sofiyya

June 03, 2010

Last week, the children watched 'The Bee Movie' which Umayr borrowed from the library which of course inspired me to use it as our next theme.In one week, we've learned that worker bees are females, unlike what was potrayed in the movie, and the only males are drones whose only work is to mate! We've also learned how honey is made and made use of it to bake and not forgetting the hexagon, that great figure of six which can withstand many times its weight. And of course, there is a chapter in the Quran dedicated to the bees (An-Nahl).

To incorporate the study of the bee nomenclature I used a story from mainlesson.com from the Gatty Parables which told of a bee who rebelled upon learning that all bees are divided into their different classes from the food they are fed when young and the cells they live in. Her rebellion in turn caused the death of the queen who was killed by the younger queen bee who came out of her unprotected cell as the bees were on 'strike'. Make you think of class division, fate, duty...etc, etc...

I was lucky that 'The Best of Queensland' exhibition going on at Vivocity till this Sunday included a bee show. My apologies to the bees, but the experience really helped the children to relate what they have learned since I do not know or think we have any bee farms in Singapore.

'The Life Cycle of a Honeybee' by Bobbie Kalman helped us a lot in our learning journey (I can't help but use that term: ) with all due respect to our teachers in public schools)

Here's a picture review of what we have done so far.

Sofiyya colouring her solat workbook after school.