In addition to an afternoon of sporting fun, this week has been all about bees in Year 2!

In our Science lessons, we have been learning about what animals, including humans, need in order to survive. We know that their basic needs are: food, water, air and shelter. On Monday, we learnt that honey bees are no exception. They shelter in their nests or beehives and require air in order to breathe. We also learnt about the different types of bees within a hive: a queen bee, worker bees and drone bees. We learnt that it is the job of the female worker bees to collect nectar and pollen from flowers and bring this back to the hive. Bees use this nectar to make honey which is their main source of energy. We also discovered that some worker bees have the specific task of collecting water for the colony.

To help us with our learning, we also looked at a wonderful painting by a local artist depicting the process of honey production in Dorset.

In keeping with our bee-themed week, on Wednesday we created our own nature scenes, including a beehive/nest, water source and various flowers. We then worked in groups to create an algorithm to program a Bee-Bot to leave the hive and collect nectar/pollen and water. For many of us, it was our first time using Bee-Bots so we first needed to make sure that we understood how they are programmed, using the buttons ‘forward, ‘backwards’, ‘left’ and ‘right’. While testing our algorithms, we sometimes came across mistakes (meaning that the Bee-Bot did not perform the desired movement) – this gave us a great opportunity to practise and apply our debugging skills!

Finally, on Thursday we learnt about the different stages involved in the life cycle of a bee. Take a look at us creating our diagrams below which show each stage.

What busy and enjoyable week it’s been! Have a lovely weekend everybody.