Bee Accordion

And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,

I always read John Keats's poem To Autumn at this time of year. My favorite lines are the first two, "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun", but bees are on my mind this year. Our summer trip to Utah brought us images of old fashioned beehives as they are the symbol of Utah and appear on every state highway sign. My mother-in-law gave us a a jar of delicious honey from her hive along with tales of its retrieval. And I love watching the collection of bees and pollinators of all sorts on our flowers.

I made a four-page accordion from the back panel of a grocery bag cut in half the long way. I then cut the folded pages into the shape of a hive, leaving the two sides untouched until about 2/3 of the way up the side of the book. (You can make all kinds of shapes but always have to remember to keep some of the sides intact. Otherwise, you'll have four separate pieces instead of an accordion.) I used a cereal box panel for the covers and made them just a tiny bit larger than the pages. I then covered the covers with pieces of grocery bag.

Written directions

in Spanish

Video

A closer look at My Book About Honeybees


LINKS

Tales from the Hive
NOVA page on the honeybee.

Honey Bees Life Cycle Video
Excellent youtube video with lots of close-up views. And on TeacherTube.

Life Cycle of Bee PDF
Life cycle of bees illustrated with photographs.

Busy Bees
A website by students at Heard Elementary Academy.

Beekeeping and Children
Information on beekeeping from the Liberty 4-H in Petaluma, CA.

Wish Scrolls at Wenham Museum

I spent a Saturday morning at Family Day at the Wenham Museum making wish scrolls, one of the projects in Handmade Books For a Healthy Planet. When I first made wish scrolls, based on traditional scrolls in containers from Ethiopia, I used film containers. They are becoming harder to find so I used prescription containers instead. We used brown paper grocery bags for the scrolls and to decorate the outside. I love how there is always a new adaptation and something new to learn. I had buttons and beads to add and someone came up with a way of stringing and attaching them that I hadn't thought of. We all learn from each other. I especially liked that the scrolls were made by some adults alone as well as by children. Bookmaking is for everyone.

Spirit Book Workshop at Barnard School

It's unusual to have the opportunity to give a non-curriculum specific workshop to teachers but the Barnard School in South Hampton, NH invited me to do an afternoon Spirit Book workshop as a way to give teachers a calm place to center themselves before the start of the school year. We used the front and back panels of grocery bags for the books and gathered natural materials outside. I think process is more important than product but you can see how wonderful the books they created turned out here.

Handmade Books for Literacy

This is a fabulous project. Members of the North Redwoods Book Arts Guild in California made 1,000 small handmade books which are being sold for $1.00 each to benefit a local literacy program. They used what I call the hot dog booklet.

About the project:
Article in the Times-Standard

Book Arts Guild blog

How to make your own hot dog booklet: