A Bee-utiful Day

After learning about bees we took a trip to Clovermead - a "local" apiary. Notice the quotations around the word local?? Well, it turned out to be quite the drive! Thankfully my sister Vicki and her daughter Peyton decided to come with us - so I had someone to keep me company on the journey :)

Clovermead turned out to be a wonderful place! Their big harvest / pumpkin / bee festivals only happen on the weekends, so we missed out on some fun activities like wagon rides and bee beard competitions. The bonus of going during the week was that it was so. quiet. Since my kids are rather shy, this worked out great for us!

We also got to see some of the things we learned in real life! Pretty neat!

There was lots of playground areas. Seth loves construction vehicles, so he was pretty excited to try out this excavator. Notice the dump truck? He was filling it with sand. 

 

Kiera and Peyton enjoying the sand. Well, Kiera enjoying the sand. Peyton is a little like her mom ... sand was just a little too dirty for that princess :)

There was a really neat spider web for the kids to climb on. It took some convincing to get them to leave and continue you on our adventures - Seth is turning into a real monkey. He loves to climb. And Maddy is never far behind.

Lots of tractors to climb and "drive".

This has got to be the cutest bee I have ever seen!

A neat wagon that the kids sat on. They were a little disappointed to learn that there wasn't going to be any horse ride.

They had some farm animals for the kids to look at - a cow, some chickens (some really neat kinds!), rabbits and some goats. The baby goats were so cute! Petyon loved the animals. Maddy did too - but that goes without saying! She's our animal lover.

Seth didn't stay to look at the animals for long - he saw a tire swing that was begging to be climbed. We turned it into a double decker swing!

The tire swing was soon abandoned in favour of a large rope swing. This was one of Seth's favourite parts - he loved to climb and swing.

Maddy tried to keep up with her big brother, but it was a little tricky for her. I managed to capture part of the three seconds she stayed on the rope!

Seth's absolute favourite part of the day was the zip line. I was nervous to let him do it by himself at first, and spent a fair amount of time running with him (I think I got my run in that day!). Finally I gave up and just let him do it - and he did great! He loved it and wanted to do it again ... and again ... and again ... My little boy is getting big :( It doesn't look so high in this picture, but it started off fairly high (for a short four year old) then went down.

I thought I better give Kiera some roaming time. It's tough work being stuck in a stroller for a day! There was a nice play area at the back of the farm with a big Noah's Ark play structure. Kiera loved going in and out of the boat and peeking through the window.

There was also a neat castle made out of hay bales. It had rooms, hallways, and stairs inside. Notice the no shoes - yuck!

The king of straw mountain! Once again - climbing.

There was a huge yellow "pillow" for jumping. The kids had a blast on here. And so did Vicki and I. We haven't grown up yet! Seth and Maddy loved getting double bounced by us. They really fly!

Maddy found a horse. This was on our trip to the bathroom. She had to go (which is just a given!) and refused to go in the portable washroom. We had to trek all the way to the front of the park. Apparently she has some royal blood :)

And, of course, the reason for the trip! They had thousands of bees in hives that were behind glass. It was neat to see all the bees working. It was also neat to see the wax rooms being filled up with nectar and changed into honey. They actually had a wall like this behind the toilet in the lady's washroom. Needless to say, Maddy refused to use that toilet as well!

We watched a short movie about the keeping of bees and the process in which honey is made and harvested. Seth and Maddy tried out the bee keeper's hat. Seth doesn't look very impressed ... he wasn't. I tried it on him during the movie and he was trying to listen.

We ended our day with a bee chocolate. Not that bees and chocolate are related - but I thought these guys were too cute to pass up! We did buy some honey, as well.

It was a great way to end our unit on insects / bees. The kids had so much fun! Unfortunately, as we were leaving, Seth started complaining about being cold. He fell asleep in the van on the way home, and had a fever by the time we got home. He was fine the next day, so I'm assuming it was maybe heat stroke? Or just exhaustion. Sometimes I work them hard ... busy like bees!