Within the complex ecosystem we call Mother Nature, one creature that has always fascinated the mind is the bee. From its physics-defying flight patterns to its pivotal role in worldly nutrition, the bee captures each inquisitive mind, including the highly curious students of Franklin Elementary School.
As part of Franklin and the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s (SMMUSD) growing TK (Transitional Kindergarten) program, the young TK crop at the school has been involved in a project-based learning unit busy with bee knowledge and creative endeavors. Led by general education teacher Danielle Eden and special education teacher Nell Canon, the tag-team of teachers brought students into the beehive with a host of fun projects.
“It all started with this beehive plush counting toy in our classroom that our students were obsessed with, and [began] watching all the bees that were gathering by the lunch area trash cans,” Eden said. “Students would even play a game at recess where they would run around the playground and pretend to sting each other and make honey … [our] curriculum is guided by students’ interests, so it made perfect sense to plan a unit all about bees.”
The SMMUSD TK program began enrolling students in the 2022-23 school year as part of a statewide expansion, one which aims to make the grade the entry level into public school for all students in California. The program uses the tenets of STEAM to enhance learning capabilities, standing for science, technology, engineering, art and math; and the Franklin arm of TK is the first “TK Collaborative” classroom in the district. Half the students have individualized education plans and qualify for special education services, and the other half are general education students, with Eden stating that “the goal of a collaborative class is to promote an inclusive environment where students of all needs are supported.”
Activities completed during the Franklin bee unit align seamlessly with STEAM tenets. For science, students learned about bee anatomy and the bee life cycle, and incorporated technology by making three-dimensional models of the creature. Growing math minds were supplemented by solving math story problems about how many bees the class saw at lunch, and by counting pieces of Honeycomb cereal before making a collage with them. Art was a key subject to provide learning and excitement, completing projects like making hives with bubble wrap and yellow paint, and creating “honeycomb” with hexagons.
The culminating project was the creation of a bee sanctuary for Franklin’s TK-Kindergarten yard. Students reused school lunch milk cartons and filled them with nesting tubes to make “bee hotels” where bees can rest and lay eggs into the tubes. Later, they filled dishes with gemstones and salt water, creating “bee baths” for the bees to drink and cool down in. Finally, they added lavender and rosemary plants to provide nectar and pollen, finishing off by labeling each part of the sanctuary.
Canon, who has served in the district for 10 years, has been excited at the opportunity to incorporate STEAM subjects at the TK level, thriving with the allowance of creativity given to herself and Eden.
“We try to integrate all of our pre-kindergarten sort of content, [things like] shapes and counting, all that stuff that’s in these units, but we’re kind of spoiled at this level because we get to do it in a fun, play-based way,” Canon said.
She added that in the long term, play-based learning programs in early development fosters positive outcomes in areas like problem-solving and social skills, and the collaborative classroom allows for similar curricula to general education rooms while being able to support special education needs. Along with the collaborative room at Franklin, SMMUSD has TK classrooms at Edison, Grant, McKinley, Roosevelt and Webster elementary schools, as well as at Will Rogers Learning Community.
“We all feel like [project-based learning] is such a big piece,” Canon said. “[SMMUSD] in particular really supports that model of play and the importance of play, and integrating learning throughout that. I think it’s huge … I think our district has done a really good job of rolling [TK] out in stages, and then also making sure its developmentally appropriate.”