The youth of today
Educating the younger generation and about the importance of bees may be one of the important parts of our mission. The younger generations will be the change makers of the world. It will be their voices that will save what's left. Help us educate the young with these kid friendly activites for kids K-8.
Try this fun jeopardy game all about bees!
This game was created based on the information on this website but adapted to make it easier for younger students to understand.
Best for kids ages 9-12
Best for kids ages 9-12
Bee Pollinating Game
To prepare a fun game to help students understand the impact that bees have on pollinating flowers and crops, use the instructions below as a guide. Unfortunately, this is a game designed for the traditional classroom setting and would be difficult to adapt to a virtual classroom.
Beforehand preparation: print out the flower template below and prepare anywhere from 25-50 flowers, depending on the class size. Collect a sticker booklet with enough pages for each student to have a page. Both of these materials are only suggested and substitutions can be found. This game is best played after a lesson teaching students about pollination and how it works.
Classroom Setup: To set up this game adhere the flowers to different locations around the room with 1-5 flowers per location. There should be between five and ten locations depending on the size of the class and the duration of the game.
Playing the Game:
1. Give each student a sheet of stickers tell them this is their "pollen" that has been collected from flowers.
2. Set a timer for anywhere between 30 seconds and a minute (or longer if there are more than fifty flowers prepared).
3. Have the students try to "pollinate" the flowers as quickly as they can by placing one of their stickers on each flower.
4. When the timer finishes see which student has used the most stickers, they can be declared a "winner" if desired.
5. Steps one through four can be repeated a few times to see if the students are able to go faster after some practice.
6. When the game has been completed it should be explained to the class that bees pollinate over 1 million flowers a day. Using this approximation that would be over 600 flowers a minute and over 300 flowers in 30 seconds. They can compare this to the number of flowers that they "pollinated," in order to help them understand the essential role that pollinators play in the world. Other facts that could be included in this lesson:
Beforehand preparation: print out the flower template below and prepare anywhere from 25-50 flowers, depending on the class size. Collect a sticker booklet with enough pages for each student to have a page. Both of these materials are only suggested and substitutions can be found. This game is best played after a lesson teaching students about pollination and how it works.
Classroom Setup: To set up this game adhere the flowers to different locations around the room with 1-5 flowers per location. There should be between five and ten locations depending on the size of the class and the duration of the game.
Playing the Game:
1. Give each student a sheet of stickers tell them this is their "pollen" that has been collected from flowers.
2. Set a timer for anywhere between 30 seconds and a minute (or longer if there are more than fifty flowers prepared).
3. Have the students try to "pollinate" the flowers as quickly as they can by placing one of their stickers on each flower.
4. When the timer finishes see which student has used the most stickers, they can be declared a "winner" if desired.
5. Steps one through four can be repeated a few times to see if the students are able to go faster after some practice.
6. When the game has been completed it should be explained to the class that bees pollinate over 1 million flowers a day. Using this approximation that would be over 600 flowers a minute and over 300 flowers in 30 seconds. They can compare this to the number of flowers that they "pollinated," in order to help them understand the essential role that pollinators play in the world. Other facts that could be included in this lesson:
- Hand pollination has been attempted in parts of the world where bees have been killed by pesticides. Those farmers can only pollinate about 30 trees a day compared to the bees over a million flowers.
- Some plants, such as tomatoes, cannot be pollinated by humans because they require "buzz pollination" that only bees can provide.
- Hand pollinating would cost 90 billion dollars per year.
- A farmer can produce a couple hundred pounds of crops without the help of commercial beekeeping. This means relying on wind pollination and pollination by other animals and the smaller populations of native bees. With commercial bees that number rises to 100,00 pounds per acre.