Book Review: Diary of a Bee

May 26, 2025 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

Diary of a Bee by Štěpánka Sekaninová, illustrated by Linh Dao, is a cute book for early elementary school readers about the life cycle of a bee.

It follows Matilda, who goes from egg to larva and bee in 21 days, then does various jobs in the hive through her life. She goes from being fed by older bees herself to feeding others, packing pollen into cells of the hive, nursing, taking nectar from forrager bees, making wax to build the hive, guarding the hive and finally foraging for pollen herself.

Her friend Thomas is a drone so readers also learn a bit about what drones do as well as the queen bee. There is talk of death and bees separating to make a new hive, and in the end new bees (with the same names as the old bees) are ready in the next spring to start the cycle over again.

The book is cute and a quick read that does have some good information in it. The illustrations are silly, with young bees drinking from baby bottles and the drones going to their “wedding” dressed in tiny tuxedos. There’s a kid in every group who will wonder if bees really have baby bottles or carry pollen in baskets, but this is not meant to be a super literal science book.

Still, the science is sound and the book will help kids learn about the different kinds of bees and the jobs they do, their life cycle, how the communicate and how they see.

This book would be a fun addition to your collection of bee books or to add to a pollinator unit study. Or keep it in the science section of the classroom for kids to enjoy the pretty flowers in the illustrations and the good information about the life of bees.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover, published 2025 by Albatross Books. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Next Plan Idea:

Learning about Bees for Kids

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Shark Week Learning for Kids

Shark Week generally happens in July, but any time is a good time to learn more about sharks.

First, start with some fun whale facts like these from Kids Craft Room. Here I learned about the dwarf lantern shark, which is the smallest shark and only grows to about 6-8 inches (about 15-20 cm) long. It also emits light. How cool is that?

Natural Beach Living has some great printable shark information guides, where kids can learn about different kinds of sharks, match the facts to the pictures, or print out doubles and do a shark memory game.

Living Life an Learning has some great shark activity pages including the parts of a shark, types of sharks, a crossword puzzle and more. Also check out their parts of a shark and word scramble download, and a life cycle worksheet.

Learn about how sharks float with this great activity from JDaniel4’s Mom.

Need more facts about sharks? This fact pact from The WOLFe PACK on Teacher Pay Teachers includes fact sheets, a printable flip book, informational text, vocabulary, comprehension questions and more.

Living Montessori Now has a great collection of shark themed activities with a Montessori inspired twist. You’ll find a shark roll and cover, shark phonics and lots more shark activities Deb has collected from all over the Internet.

Remember the “Sharknado” movie? A Few Shortcuts turned the combination of sharks and tornadoes into a fun science activity. You’ll need a bottle connector for this project but otherwise should have everything you need on hand. Use their template to make your sharks out of aluminum foil. So fun!

You can also do some shark themed coloring with these coloring pages from Encouraging Moms at Home. Or make a cool 3D shark with this template from korkotak. And there are tons of different shark crafts collected in this post from Kids Activities Blog.

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