Bee Craft and Recipe Activities

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We’ve been thinking about all things ‘Bees’ this week and coming up with some easy bee crafts for kids. I think it’s a wonderful quirk of the English language that we have collective nouns. I mean some of them are completely bonkers! Like a shrewdness of apes or a romp of otters! Years ago I spotted these posters and if it hadn’t been that they were a tad expensive- I would have snapped them up! Aren’t they gorgeous? Anyhow, I’ve linked up with a group of bloggers  (would we be called a swarm as well?!) and we’ve been exploring crazy collective nouns of the English Language with children’s craft activities and recipes! Our challenge was to create a bee craft activity for kids.

I chose a ‘swarm’ of bees as Orla, my 3 year old has been quite interested in bees since we found some massive honey bees that stayed in our conservatory all day (and confined my elder daughter to the garden!) – and so we read the book ‘I like Bees, I don’t like honey!’ together by Sam Bishop. This is such a funny and thought provoking book and it’s a good book for helping kids to express their feelings. If you also want a good book that helps kids understand the importance of bees for nature than this book ‘Why do We Need Bees?’  by Usbourne Publishing is a great one and has lovely illustrations and lift the flap sections.

Pipe Cleaner Bee Craft for kids

Next, we wanted to make a honey bee craft so we made a simple toilet roll bee using pipe cleaners.

I hadn’t planned it to be so, but this is actually great for developing little ones fine motor skills, whilst they’re twisting the pipe cleaners round the tube! If you’d like to make a Toilet Roll Bee Craft, you will need….

How to make Bees out of Pipe Cleaners

• Toilet Roll
• Yellow and Black Pipe Cleaners
• Red duct tape
• Double Sided Sticky Tape
• White Card
• Baking paper, tracing paper, gauze, muslin or some other translucent paper

1. Cover the toilet roll with double sided sticky tape
2. Wrap the black and yellow pipe cleaner around the toilet roll, pressing it gently so it sticks to the sticky tape
3. Make two small antennas out of black pipe cleaners and stick inside the toilet roll to make the antennae.
4. Make two small eyes out of white card and glue them to your bee.
5. Add a small mouth made out of red duct tape.
6. Lastly, make the wings and stick them to the back of your bee. These can be made out of any translucent kind of material like, tracing paper, baking paper etc….

Bee Themed Recipe Ideas

Keeping with our bee theme, we made some honeycomb chocolate slice. I’d like to say we made the honeycomb as it’s something I’d love to do- the colour is just so pretty- I could spend a whole day photographing it! However, I also needed something chocolatey to satisfy a certain little six year old on his birthday because we aren’t making his proper birthday cake until his party day. So, honeycomb chocolate slice made with Crunchies it was! These could be made out of any chocolate though – Maltesers work well too.  This is a really yummy fridge bake and a ‘bung it all in’ kind of recipe so it’s perfect for making with the kiddos.

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Honeycomb Chocolate Slice (makes 15 small squares)

• 100g butter
• 200g (1/2 can)  condensed milk
• 300g Milk Chocolate
• 3-4 Crunchie Bars
• 1 small pack digestive biscuits

1. Put the digestive biscuits into a plastic bag and smash with a rolling pin until you have mostly crumbs but also some chunks too, add to a bowl and set aside.
2. Next, bash the Crunchie bars too and set aside in a separate bowl.
3. Melt the butter, chocolate and condensed milk over a pan. Once melted, stir in the biscuits and some of the Crunchie Bars.
4. Press firmly into tin lined with greaseproof paper.
5. Scatter the remaining Crunchie crumbs over the top and chill in the fridge for at least 2-3 hours.

I hope you have lots of fun learning about bees with these fun bee activities for kids. If you’d like to make some more bee crafts for kids, check out these lovely ideas here. Once you’ve finished learning all about bees, you could try our other animal crafts – here’s a cute Goggly eyes frog craft!

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