Book Review: Diary of a Bee

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.

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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