Review: The Benevolent Bee

You know what?  I happen to like bees.  I admittedly wasn't fond of them as a child when one stun me on the eye (landed on my face so I grabbed at it)  BIG mistake.  So it took me a while to get back that, but once I realized how neat they were, I developed a fondness for them.  Stephanie Bruneau brings us the Benevolent Bee, a  book crafted to show us the bee and how she works, AND how we can benefit from all she provides.   

I have to admit, this is a rather neat book.  It talks briefly about the lifecycle and work of the honeybee, but devotes itself to the benefits of honeybees.

Ms Bruneau first teaches the science behind each of the benefits of the honeybee.  She works her way through propolis, pollen, honey, royal jelly, venom and beeswax.   Did you know that in it's final state honey can last forever without spoiling? 

She follows this up with recipes, crafts or projects one can do.  You can learn to make elderberry syrup, honey fire tonic, royal jelly fudge, stinging nettle tea with honey, turn honeycomb into beeswax or make a floating acorn cap candle.  So many different recipes and ideas to explore.

She even included stories of people using bee venom.  I'd heard about using bee venom before but never really looked into it. It's been used in China for more than 2000 years. You can also use bee venom to reduce allergic reactions! 

All in all it's a very helpful book.   For the budding apiarist this book would be helpful in explaining the benefits of bee keeping.  For the person just wanting to know more about the benefits of bees, this book provides it all!  It's a wonderfully helpful book indeed.  :)
About the Author:  Stephanie Bruneau is a beekeeper, herbalist, and artist. She runs The Benevolent Bee, a small business selling honey, beeswax candles, herbal body care products, and other handcrafted and hive-derived items. At the Benevolent Bee "Teaching Apiary" Stephanie observes, learns, and teaches about bees and bee behavior to students of all ages.

The Benevolent Bee: Capture the bounty of the Hive through Science, History, Home Remedies and Craft.
Stephanie Bruneau
Quarry Books
160 books
Oversized trade paperback

Reviewed for: Quarto Group

Where can you find The Benevolent Bee?

Amazon.ca: The Benevolent Bee: Capture the Bounty of the Hive through Science, History, Home Remedies and Craft - Includes recipes and techniques for honey, beeswax, propolis, royal jelly, pollen, and bee venom

Amazon.com: The Benevolent Bee: Capture the bounty of the hive through science, history, home remedies and craft. 

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Reading, Writing and Drawing.

Today we did chapter four in "the Lamb".  I love the pictures in the book and the lad likes answering the questions at the end of each chapter.  They are simple.  It's a good book thus far.

Also finished off our section on Knights And castles in our world history book.    Today we learned about how the knights divided up into orders and how other countries had knights as well.   Next up will be pirates.

Then we learned about the masked shew in The ultimate guide to North American Wildlife.

This was followed by going out for a walk in the field behind the church and picking up golf balls.  The lad will keep some and others he will sell at my annual yardsale.

We did some guided drawing using pastels.   Homeschool freebie of the day had a link to Pastels today.    Here is the lad's first ever  drawing done using pastel's.   It was a bit of challenge for him, he likes to draw using heavy lines but with pastels sometimes you need to use a lighter hand.  :)   Did not half bad with the sun I thought, and a good effort with Darwin the dolphin.  :)

In the mid-afternoon we decided to organize all this junk stuff.   That's what hubby calls it.  You know all the toilet paper rolls, empty containers, styrofoam trays that people keep in order to have craft supplies for ones children?   Well we got it organized and out of the basement and main floor of the house.  This of course inspired the lad to do some more boat building.

Playing and Doing Homeschool

Our Tuesday generally consist of play, homeschool, play, homeschool and so forth. I normally throw in doing dishes, laundry, and so forth.

We mix it up with some computer time, science time, art work etc. It's usually a very enjoyable day.

Today we did two lessons in Reading Kingdom. Reading Kingdom uses a whole word approach, I tend to be more of phonetics person, but I see no harm in learning a different way. I figure a varied approach is not always a bad thing. There are good and bad points to each way of learning how to read. We are currently doing a trial period to see how it goes.

We then did two lessons from Head of the Class. This is their kindergarten page. One where I wanted him to do a simple exercise but had to look at the first letter in order to figure out what colour he had to do. For a younger child I would have read the word, but I wanted the lad to sound it out and then make his decision. He did fairly well. It's called Colours. Then I was wanting to do something kinda artsy cause well.. he's that type of child. So I saw this one called Stitch and Sew. I expected it to be the normal yarn/shoelace around a pattern...but it was actual needle and thread sewing. The boy was QUITE pleased with himself and showed off his art work to dad. "I did it myself daddy". I helped for the first bit and around the tricky bits, and we didn't do the heart as shown in the video..we did a cat. The lad was quite very pleased with himself, and I have to admit, I was quite pleased as well. We talked about the parts of a needle, the thread, I tied in the bible verse about the camel going through the eye of the needle and so forth.

Then we played for a while. ended up going for a walk instead of reading and then cleaning the kitchen. on our walk we met the dirties, They make you act like dirt until
someone uses a machine to make you human again.
Here is the lad being dirt.

The lad also wanted to do his make a pizza program as well. and then we watched the spy next door and played doctor at the same time with a bunch of sick stuffies. :) Always an interesting day in the life here. :)

just before bed he had fun making leaf creations. He made all sorts of interesting creatures, learning to resize, rotate and just exercise his creative intelligence.

Ground Hog Day

Today we studied ground hog day.

We pulled information from the web to do this study.

The history of Ground Hog Day: Groundhog club

A pop up ground hog. We added a flashlight to be the sun and had a cloud shape as well. Will the groundhog see his shadow?

We learned abit about the groundhog.

We tried to make shadow puppets...but well... let's just say it was an attempt. :)

We read this book:


We played this memory game of animals that hibernate. and tic-tac-toe ground hog here.

And we learned about Wiarton Willie (the Canadian groundhog). :)

and I went here to print off some PDF's for the lad to work on. Took a bit of figuring to get them to print off as my computer is being fidgety today.

We did another craft, but I can't find the link to it anymore.

Things Justin wants to do....

Stained Glass Jesus Craft. I found this site through Totally Tots.
Justin in establishing the parameters for this craft. Mommy, does it have to have words on it? can I put bunnies on it? what about a hare? Can I do something different?
Me --- You can do whatever you want buddy, as long as we can make it, and make it fit on the paper.
J --- oh, yes, I want to make it!

Nativity Pop Up Cards
Once again, he needed to establish the parameters around this. Could he make it different? Did it have to be a people picture or could he make it with bunnies, or cats, or robots ..... I figure it's a craft, and yes I want to encourage biblical knowledge, but it's a craft. :)

Preschool Christmas crafts.
he was intrigued by these as well.

This one I'm to print off tonight and get ready for him so he can help gramma with it tomorrow.

He wants to do this one as well. :)

I haven't had a chance to go through all the links on this page yet, but I"m sure some of them will intrigue the lad.

The Compound words one intrigues me, but it isn't something that he is ready for at this point.