School presentations

[Gilberdyke John]

My primary school grand daughter has been telling her class that granddad has some bees. One parent commented it would be nice to teach the kids about them.
I thought there must be power points on the web which would be aimed at young'uns but google and other searches aren't much help. Anyone know of something with lots of pictures and simple explanations possibly about half an hour or so or shall I try to produce one from scratch?

 

[pargyle]

My primary school grand daughter has been telling her class that granddad has some bees. One parent commented it would be nice to teach the kids about them.
I thought there must be power points on the web which would be aimed at young'uns but google and other searches aren't much help. Anyone know of something with lots of pictures and simple explanations possibly about half an hour or so or shall I try to produce one from scratch?

I think it was Pete in Wilts that did a presentation to his local WI a while ago ... might be one sculling around somewhere ?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

And PeteD - probably a lot better than the one I have. I do this strange thing called 'talking' never got into this 'death by powerpoint' thing sorry

 

[YorkshireBees]

I think it was Pete in Wilts that did a presentation to his local WI a while ago ... might be one sculling around somewhere ?

The link is here http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showpost.php?p=329258&postcount=30


not sure if that is what you want for kids but maybe a starting place

 

[acabee]

I won't suggest which powerpoint to choose, but as someone involved in education I would suggest nothing more than 15 mins long and no more than 10 slides. Also props (frames; smoker; wax) etc can make it more fun and 'real'. If you are feeling confident, why not give some of the important 'jobs' of the hive to different members of the class eg send some out as foragers to go and find some flowers bees might like; get some guarding the classroom entrance checking on the returning foragers. If you can't get them out, then ask them where they would go locally if they were honeybees looking for forage ...get them to identify something 5km away that would be their limit.. and so on.

I could give a 1 hour lecture on why people only listen for 15-20 minutes in a 1hr lecture. So I'd best stop this post now.

Good luck!

acabee

 

[beekeeping4you]

My primary school grand daughter has been telling her class that granddad has some bees. One parent commented it would be nice to teach the kids about them.
I thought there must be power points on the web which would be aimed at young'uns but google and other searches aren't much help. Anyone know of something with lots of pictures and simple explanations possibly about half an hour or so or shall I try to produce one from scratch?

This is a must:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRoAaQq6wFg[/ame]

 

[johncorne]

Does your local association have photos and "demo kit"? We have a "Virtual Hive" that has photos on the frames, the kids love finding the queen and the drones!

Jc

 

[Gilberdyke John]

I like the bee for Christmas you tube clip but really wanted to use some photos which could perhaps become posters or be included in a workbook.
The idea of shortening to max 20 minutes is good or even to have two separate shows on different days might be better still.
Work in progress!

 

[alberturner]

school presentation

I would forget powerpoint presentations etc. Just put together a short story about the life of a very busy bee, take some props, ie an empty hive, bee suit, any thing they can get hands on. Some pictures would be fine.Take some ideas from others but make up your own talk. If you can talk to your grandaughter about bees and keep her interested (or about any thing else) then you can do it to more of her age group. Good luck and be prepared for some unexpected questions.

 

[mbc]

This is a must:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRoAaQq6wFg

Really ? Nah, thats patronising twaddle, just show them some of the kit and get them to taste some fresh comb honey while talking to them, that will spark their interest.

 

[beekeeping4you]

Really ? Nah, thats patronising twaddle, just show them some of the kit and get them to taste some fresh comb honey while talking to them, that will spark their interest.

Hi mbc,
It's a pity that you can only see the 'patronising twaddle' in this 2-minute video. Maybe you should play it again, I think there is a lot more in it...

'Just show them some of the kit' will possibly not spark much interest and 'get them to taste some fresh comb honey while talking to them' will definitely end up in a sticky disaster!

Regards
Reiner

 

[pargyle]

Hi mbc,
It's a pity that you can only see the 'patronising twaddle' in this 2-minute video. Maybe you should play it again, I think there is a lot more in it...

'Just show them some of the kit' will possibly not spark much interest and 'get them to taste some fresh comb honey while talking to them' will definitely end up in a sticky disaster!

Regards
Reiner

I thought it was great Reiner ... kids would love it - have you seen their reaction to Horrible Histories ? Get the facts across in a form they WANT to digest !

 

[nonstandard]

I did one a couple of years ago, I wore my suit, took some kit and some A4 photos of bees, wasps and bumbles to illustrate the differences as well as photos of a swarm etc. I also had a hat with veil, some gloves and a couple of children's books that I lent to them for a couple of days.

I tried to gloss over the issue of drones, purely mentioning that they existed and that the girls do all the work; unfortunately the teacher pressed me on the issue "well they must be there for something".

I have another one to do soon, for that I'm hoping to borrow an observation hive and have gratefully picked a few other ideas up from this thread.

 

[davnig]

Really ? Nah, thats patronising twaddle, just show them some of the kit and get them to taste some fresh comb honey while talking to them, that will spark their interest.

i didn't like it either, and they showed steve with a sting, wrong shaped egg and larva too big in proportion to bee. Maybe little things but let's get things right if we're trying to educate

 

[alfazer]

They find it hard to concentrate on listening for any longer than 1 minute per year of their age. Then get them to DO some kind of activity.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

get them to DO some kind of activity.

Let a few bees loose for them to see - that'll get them moving!

 

[BeeJayBee]

My primary school grand daughter has been telling her class that granddad has some bees. One parent commented it would be nice to teach the kids about them.
I thought there must be power points on the web which would be aimed at young'uns but google and other searches aren't much help. Anyone know of something with lots of pictures and simple explanations possibly about half an hour or so or shall I try to produce one from scratch?

Not powerpoint, but there are a lot of resources you can download with pictures and stuff they can colour in etc.. Try these :
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/lasi/resources/education/teachersarea/primaryschool

http://www.beeschool.co.uk/

http://www.bb ka . org.uk/kids/more_childrens_corner (join gaps in url)

 

[alldigging]

Let a few bees loose for them to see - that'll get them moving!

I can imagine the paperwork involved after that!

A pile of kit and get them to build it up into a hive? The artificial swarm demonstrated by kids being bees?
A video of some swarms being caught?
Some smell and taste stuff if possible.

Schools use different things to keep kids engaged in lessons -
Kinesthetic learning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinesthetic_learning
And visual and auditory. A well balanced classroom experience would ensure all three aspects were covered.

 

[acabee]

Lots of good ideas here, and I would fully endorse the hands-on experiences. I would also strongly suggest you speak with the teacher and see if s/he is able to give some advice on what might work in their particular classroom / location.

Also .. tell them what bees do at night - kids love the idea of knowing what an animal is doing at the same time as them - something they can 'take home' as they drift off to sleep.

Your problem will be keeping the 'talk' down to less than a day

Key to everything though is to make it engaging (doing / handling stuff) and relevant to their experience (eg food; water; sleep; home

acabee

 

[Elaine]

I used to do talks in schools when I worked in a Zoo - we'd do a few slides (powerpoint hadn't been invented then) - and then most of the time was for hands-on. As mentioned before - be ready for anything when it comes to questions!