Build a Bee Home With Your Kids - Happy International Bee Day 0

Hello bee-lovers, time to build a bee home!

While May 20^th marks International Bee Day, I think any day can be bee day. As the nicer weather rolls in, here is a fun craft you can do with children to help benefit the bees.

Bee Hotel Craft

Bee hotels are beneficial for solitary bees and wasps, both important for an ecosystem. Providing them a safe place to settle is important for your garden to help with pollination and also pest control (wasps can nom on spiders and other pests). The activity is also a great science project that allows for children to learn about pollinators up close.

This fun hands-on activity allows children to let their creativity buzz as they build a home for bees. A great DIY project to explore animal habitats and socio-environmental systems. This project utilizes materials you may already have around the home if you have children who love doing arts and crafts.

What You’ll Need:

• A can (like a soup or bean can) or a large water bottle
• Art supplies for decorating. Have fun!
• Sheets of color paper
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Tape
• Glue
• One toilet paper roll
• Twigs from outside
• Two pieces of string

Steps:

1.       Carefully remove the top off a used can or bottle. Make sure there are no sharp edges on your can and it’s completely clean and dry.

2.       Decorate the can how you’d like – stickers, paint, construction paper, etc. Let your creativity buzz. Just keep the decorations on the outside so it doesn't harm future guests.

3.       Cut the paper in half. Each piece needs to be a bit shorter than the tin can when you hold them next to each other, with a minimum of six inches.

4.       Use the pencil to roll the paper. It needs to be rolled five or six times to make the tube thick. Tape the roll so it stays and then remove pencil.

5.       Rinse and repeat making the rolls until you have enough to fill the can/bottle.

6.       Cover the bottom of the can with glue and then put the toilet paper roll inside. Put the thinner tubes in the roll and around outside. Make sure not to squish the rolls, you want the bees to fit inside.

7.       Break the twigs to fit inside the can and use them to fill in the open spaces in the can, around the toilet paper roll.

8.       Tie rope around the can, one near the top and another near the bottom. Each piece of string should be long enough to wrap around the can twice and you’ll want another 8 to 12 inches extra to hang from the tree branch.

9.       Now to go to your garden! Find a tree in a sunny part outside and tie it to a branch.

10.   Be sure to mention that it make take a while for a bee to use it as a shelter to help your child's expectations. You can plan to check the bee home occasionally to see if a guest has moved in.

Ta-da! You now have a bee hotel. Keep in mind, bee hotels are entirely for solitary bees and wasps. Each nest is owned by a single female, who lays her own eggs and gathers all the food needed for each offspring.

While bee hotels can be useful, if you’re able, the best option in your garden is to go as natural as you can, and you can do this by giving them access to a place where they can burrow underground with lightly covered soil. The bees who don’t burrow in the ground like to make use of dead wood cavities or hollow plant stems instead. The best areas for them are south or east-facing slopes. They love the sun and the slope ensures it’s well drained.

Building a bee hotel is a simple, creative way to support local pollinators and spark curiosity in young minds. Whether it's Bee Day or any sunny afternoon, this hands-on project helps kids connect with nature while giving solitary bees a safe space to thrive. Happy crafting and buzzing!

Looking for some bee-utiful picture books to read, be sure to check out:

Lola Meets the Bees
by Anna McQuinn, illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw
HC: 9781623543839
TR: 9781623545949

Honeybee Rescue: A Backyard Drama
by Loree Griffin Burns, photographs by Ellen Harasimowicz
HC: 9781623542399

Starting kindergarden or pre-school - tips 0

Starting kindergarden or pre-school - tips

Happy 10th Birthday, Lola! 0

By Anna McQuinn

After I decided to take a break from publishing in 2003 (I’d been Publisher of my own list for the previous six years prior to a takeover), I returned to working directly with children. I was really lucky to get an almost full-time position with Sure Start (an organization like Head Start) in Acton in West London, and I was tasked with reaching out to the community and encouraging families to join and use the library. Acton has a particularly diverse community and in some areas quite a deprived one, and my organization felt that the community was not accessing enough of the library services.

To achieve this, I started up a Family Book Group (we started each session with the choice of a very easy craft, puzzles, or small play, then tidied up for some songs and rhymes). Then I went about the community visiting baby clinics, drop-in clinics, free milk days, and play groups to let families know about the library. However, I discovered that many of the arguments around books and very young children are not yet won.

Families Anna worked with at the library.

Having worked in children’s publishing for almost twenty years, I thought that everyone knew how important it is to read with young children. However, when I started doing outreach, I realized that I had to make these arguments all over again; moms had to be persuaded that it was not silly to read a book to a toddler who can’t read; parents had to be persuaded that it was appropriate to bring a little child into a library and that they would be welcome and find things to do; moms had to be reassured that if their baby made a noise in the library, that would be okay…

Anna's library gang, 2012.

So, like Lola herself who solves all of life’s problems with a book, I decided to write a simple story about a little girl who goes to the library—to show her choosing books, to show story time and rhyme time, and to show her mommy read to her. I feel so lucky that Charlesbridge saw the potential of this simple little story and decided to publish it—Lola at the Library came out in 2006, ten years ago this year!

Lola at the Library. Text copyright © 2006 by Anna McQuinn. Illustrations copyright © 2006 by Rosalind Beardshaw. Published by Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

Lola en la biblioteca. Text copyright © 2008 by Anna McQuinn. Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Rosalind Beardshaw. Published by Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

People often ask me why I decided to make Lola a little girl of African heritage. In fact for me, there was no big decision—I don’t think there needs to be some special reason to make a child of color the star of a story. On the contrary, I would say “Why not?!”

I strongly believe that the range of books on offer are not diverse enough. And, I believe that we can’t fix this if we wait around for some special reason to feature a child of color in a story. Folktales are beautiful and books which deal with issues are necessary, but I think if you are three and a half, don’t you ache to see someone just like you in a story? So when I had the thought, “Could Lola be a little girl of color?” I immediately felt, “Why not?!”

Lola was of course much loved by librarians when she first appeared—how could any book enthusiast resist this tiny book-loving hero? As her story developed, (Daddy appeared in the second title and she got a new baby brother, Leo, in the next, who now has his own series for even younger readers) the series found a wider audience—though booklovers are always her biggest fans.

Lola Loves Stories. Text copyright © 2010 by Anna McQuinn. Illustrations copyright © 2010 by Rosalind Beardshaw. Published by Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

A Lola le encantan los cuentos. Text copyright © 2012 by Anna McQuinn. Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Rosalind Beardshaw. Published by Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

Lola Reads to Leo. Text copyright © 2012 by Anna McQuinn. Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Rosalind Beardshaw. Published by Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

Lola le lee al pequeno Leo. Text copyright © 2013 by Anna McQuinn. Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Rosalind Beardshaw. Published by Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

Leo Loves Baby Time. Text copyright © 2014 by Anna McQuinn. Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Ruth Hearson. Published by Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

A Leo le gusta Bebelandia. Text copyright © 2015 by Anna McQuinn. Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Ruth Hearson. Published by Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

Leo Can Swim. Text copyright © 2016 by Anna McQuinn. Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Ruth Hearson. Published by Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

Readers have also fallen in love with the illustrations, and I feel so privileged to work with two women who are as nice as they are talented: Rosalind Beardshaw (the Lola books) and Ruth Hearson (the Leo books).

Books and reading continue to be at the core of Lola's adventures—a story will fire her imagination and when faced with any difficulty, she always looks to a book to solve it: she dresses up and plays at being characters from the stories she reads; her mom uses stories to prepare her for the arrival of the new baby; she reads Mary Mary Quite Contrary in a book of garden poems and immediately wants to try to grow some flowers of her own (necessitating a trip to the library for some research of course), and in her next adventure publishing in Spring 2017, when she really really wants a cat, she proves to her mom that she’s ready to be responsible by finding out all about how to care for cats.

                                                        Coming in Spring 2017:

Lola Plants a Garden. Text copyright © 2014 by Anna McQuinn. Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Rosalind Beardshaw. Published by Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

Lola planta un jardin. Text copyright © 2017 by Anna McQuinn. Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Rosalind Beardshaw. Published by Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

Coming in Spring 2017:

Lola Gets a Cat. Text copyright © 2017 by Anna McQuinn. Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Rosalind Beardshaw. Published by Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

I think for that reason, book lovers everywhere see themselves in her stories. Certainly I see a lot of myself in her—I was one of those kids who read everything in sight (including the back of the cereal packet at breakfast and the back of the shampoo bottle while sitting on the loo). And I think this has contributed not just to her success but to her longevity. Lola at the Library is ten years in print this year and still going strong—and not just in the U.S., but in the UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Republic of Korea, South Africa, Brazil, and soon, Sweden!

The UK (left) and Ireland (right) versions of Lola at the Library.

The Netherlands (left) and Denmark (right) editions of Lola at the Library.

The Brazil (left) and Republic of Korea (right) translations of Lola at the Library.

You’ll see from the covers that Lola has different names around the globe. She began life as Lola and is still called Lola in the U.S.—in both English and Spanish editions. In the UK, not long before publication, Lauren Child’s book series, Charlie & Lola was acquired for children’s TV by the BBC. Afraid of possible confusion, I racked my brain for an alternative. She was called Layla for a time, but it’s funny, even though it’s just one letter more, it seemed too long for a little cutie like Lola. Then one day on my way to my library group, I heard a Somali mom beckon her little girl, “Lulu!” and there it was—a short name that still alliterated with Library! When the Dutch translation was underway, the publisher at Luister contacted me and asked if she could change the name. She too wanted it to alliterate with Library, which is bieb in Dutch, and she already had a proposal—Bibi. I thought it was perfect! In Denmark, they felt Lulu didn’t sound quite right and went for Luna, while in Brazil, they stuck with Lulu. And in the Republic of Korea—well, you tell me!

   Anna McQuinn has worked in children's books for more than twenty-five years as an editor, publisher, and writer. She has written more than twenty books for children, including the Lola series and books about Lola's baby brother, Leo. Anna lives in England.