When kindergarten did a unit on bees we connected art to science and literacy. I accessed the students’ prior knowledge about the topic by having a big discussion about what we already knew about bees. During this brainstorming process we wrote down some of what we already knew by creating lists. This really got the kiddos jazzed up as they love to share animal facts. There was another literacy building connection as we read stories that connected to the topic of bees. Books often propel our creative thinking before we start our projects. When we started to build on our drawing skills we talked about the anatomy of the honey bee and translated that to drawings by breaking down an image of a bee into various shapes. The project moved into working with oil pastels and even an element of printmaking and painting. Finally, we began to translate all that we had learned into large scale paper mache sculptures!
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