Reading Adventure Pack: Bees
Go on a "bees" reading adventure! Teachers can support reading together at home with our reading adventure packs — designed to encourage hands-on fun and learning centered around paired fiction and nonfiction books. (Level: Third Grade)
Explore bees!
The featured books are The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco and The Life and Times of the Honeybee by Charles Micucci. The Bee Tree offers a lesson about the rewards of hard work. Mary Ellen is reluctant to spend time indoors reading, so her grandfather creates an adventure that has them-and half the village-following a bee to its home and to the results of its hard work — its honey. In The Life and Times of the Honeybee, detailed, full-color illustrations help explain the complex world inside a beehive and the fascinating process of making honey. Readers get the facts on the life cycle of bees, their work, and their relationship with people and plants.
How Bees Make Honey
You might want to try this related activity with your child, too. Download, print, and cut out our 8-page mini-book How Bees Make Honey and work together with your child to put the pages in the correct order. Your child will learn some great vocabulary, too — words such as "proboscis" and "evaporate."
Get the books
The featured books were chosen for their quality and availability in most school and public libraries. However, if you would like to purchase the books, here are the links:
The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco
The Life and Times of the Honeybee by Charles Micucci
What's in the reading adventure pack?
- Parent information sheet with an introductory note that teachers can personalize, instructions about how to use the packet, and tips for sharing fiction and nonfiction books with children
- Two books: one fiction and one nonfiction, selected by Reading Rockets for high quality and wide availability in school libraries
- Creativity Activity: a hands-on craft project
- Imagination Activity: encourages imaginative play, writing, or drawing
- Get Real Activity: focuses on real-world experiences for parent and child
- Bookmark: lists the featured titles and alternative titles
- Parent survey
While designed as a school-to-home project, reading adventure packs are also great for summer programs, after-school programs, and home-schoolers.
Interested in more reading adventures?
Browse our full library of reading adventure packs. And for additional information about reading adventure packs, you might want to read this article.
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There should be a stress on availability and use of texts presenting opposing views so students can develop CRITICAL thinking and avoid a danger of being brain-washed into blindly accepting “prevailing view”.
Good article. My concern is with a few seemingly conflicting dictates;"teach more complex texts' versus " "read material at own level. "Keep students in the text" versus "compare multiple sources." Also- there is a heavy presumption that the available text is a good one with respect to the reading skill level of the class.
i think this is a great website for parents and teachers
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Great idea to get parents involved. I think we need to be less concerned about complex text at home. Teachers can do that at school. Let's foster a love of reading and have the parents help out.