Create cute beehives by layering paper plates and finish it all off by adding honey bees to the outside.
So, in all honesty, I have not been following a set weekly theme lately with my son. It has been over 8 weeks with all of us home and I have sort of let everything go a bit. But I still love the ideas of projects that are not only fun but educational. And creating a beehive is the perfect opportunity to teach about honey bees and how amazing they are. Plus, most of the materials are likely hanging around your house so hopefully you don’t need to venture out to get supplies.
Materials
- 6 paper plates
- Scissors
- Glue
- Black paper
- Pencil or pen
- Yellow paint
- Paintbrush
- Honey bees (free download)
Instructions
1. Place 6 paper plates on top of each other, staggering them by about 3/4 of an inch, like below.
2. Cut out a half oval that is as large as you want the beehive to be.
3. Place the half oval on top of your plates and trace around. It is a little hard to trace so it won’t be a super precise line but that is fine for this!
4. Cut out the plates according to your markings. I also cut each plate in about half as well except for the last two.
5. Glue the plates together one by one. I used mod podge and it worked great.
6. Use scissors to trim the sides and adjust the oval shape.
7. Paint the plates yellow. Let dry.
8. Cut out a half oval from black paper.
9. Glue the black oval to the bottom middle.
10. Download and print the honey bees.
11. Cut out the honey bees and glue them to the beehive.
As I was making these I kept thinking “this is the shape usually associated with beehives, but I have never seen one like this.” So I started researching and apparently some of the earliest man-made beehives were skeps, or baskets placed open-end-down that were used to house bees and collect their honey. Now vertical hives are a lot more common but I like that the general icon or image for a hive is the skep!
