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.

Have you read?

Printable Letter Books for Preschoolers

I did a post earlier this year with activities and ideas for teaching the alphabet, but a lot or learning letters and recognizing them just has to do with seeing them and working with them a lot.

That means coloring, tracing, identifying things that start with different letters and more.

One way to reinforce the letters is through little activity books like these cute printable alphabet books from Life Over Cs.

These are available for free when you subscribe to her newsletter, and I’d say that’s well worth it if you have a little one (or a group of little ones!) working on the alphabet and letter recognition.

Each mini book includes a collection of things that start with that letter to color, color and read with words that start with the letter, tracing the letter, finding the letter in a grid and other coloring pages with objects that start with that letter.

These little books are super useful reinforcing the different letters and giving kids different activities related to the letters.

If you do a letter of the day or letter of the week you can use a new book for each one, and then keep the copies in your reading center or in a basket where kids can look at them again.

And of course you can add in all the other letter activities you like, go on a scavenger hunt for items that start with that letter, read alphabet books, practice writing letters in rice or with pompoms or playdough or whatever sensory activities you like.

You can grab the free printables when you enter you email address at Life Over Cs, and check out her other great alphabet resources and activities while you are over there.

Do you have favorite activities for teaching letters to kids? I’d love to hear about them!

[Photo: Life Over Cs]

Have you read?

Leave a Reply