Honey and the Bees – Part 1: From hives to Our Homes

Seeing the curiosity amongst our 5- 6 year olds were curious about different kinds of insects and were learning the concept of sequencing in depth in their curriculum. We decided to take them on a visit to a local honey factory.

On the day of the visit, the ground rules were arrived at and as always, they decided to learn as much as they can and not as little as they can from the visit.

We arrived at the Factory around 10:00am to find Ms. Smitha the owner and her enthusiastic team ready to take us through the journey of honey from “hives to our homes”. On our request, she had also arranged a variety of bees called Apis Mellifera to show our children.
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The journey began with getting to know our cohabiting friends better. Ms. Smitha had arranged large size portraits of the three variety of bees. Apis Dorsata, Apis Mellifera and Apis Cerana, a hive of Apis Mellifera and also sample of honey made with nectar of different flowers(Coffee, Litchi and multi-flower).

As our children were introduced to the bees, below are some questions they arrived at.
T: Why do honeybees fly?, Why do honey bees need honey?, Why are there different kinds of honey bees? How does honey go to people?
A: Why do they have different names?
E: Do they make different kinds of honey?, Which is the sweetest honey?, How is the queen bee made?
Once their questions were answered, we proceeded with the processing of honey.
We moved to an in house laboratory where they demonstrated how the honey is tested for acid content. The lab also had a large oven to sterilize the instrument where T wanted to know “What is the specific heat required to kill germs?”.

Post the lab, we moved on to the processing of honey, pasteurizing, mixing and setting. The settled honey then went through a packaging process. Where children experienced honey going through various process of packaging through a conveyor belt. Post this, children got to take home packed samples of honey.

The next day in class, children reflected on the the trip and recalled the sequence of events that happened at the factory. They got introduced to ordinal and cardinal numbers and went deeper to find different things in their life and around them that happen in sequence.

Since we picked something children were already curious about and incorporated the curriculum in it, children took away a lot more learning than through a class room activity. This is the magic of connected learning. It helps the learner make  deeper and wider connections and the more connections they make the stronger the learning.

The exploration didn’t end here, they went into the lives of honey bees in depth, which is documented in the 2nd part of this series.

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Contributed by Yashika CG, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool.