I had the kids come up in small groups where they could take some time to feel these hives and take a closer look at them. We also described what we saw, compared the hives together, and contrasted the hives together. They had such a great time with this hands on learning! I told the kids that if they found anything in their yard that they wanted to bring in for us to observe, they may gladly do so.
I couldn't wait until this weekend to show these pictures to all of you! The kids were super excited and some were going to do some extra research on bees over the next couple of days and report back to us. A couple of things they wondered were how the bees made these hives and if bees can lay some "webs". Some of the hives had wisps of "webbing." We also got to see a dead bee inside one of the hexagonal holes - it was pretty fascinating stuff.