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.

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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