Making a Magnifying Glass

Watch the video Busy as a Bee, then ask a grown-up to help you with this activity!

Bees make wonderful things for us and our environment. You probably already know they make honey for us to eat but they also create beeswax that we use to make things like candles, makeup, furniture polish, and crayons! Bees collect tiny particles of pollen when they land on flowers. You can explore how this works by becoming a bee yourself!

What you Need:

• A plastic water bottle
• A piece of paper
• Clear tape
• Scissors

What To Do:

1. To make a magnifying glass, cut a circle out of the smooth curved part of a plastic bottle just below its neck.
2. Then place the plastic circle on the table with the cut edges up and add some water into the plastic “bowl” to make a magnifying glass.
3. Then take some clear tape — any you have available should work.
4. Wrap the tape around your child’s wrist, sticky side facing out. Be careful not to make it too tight!

Play Be the Bee:

Go outside and flutter around like a bee, landing on different surfaces. The sticky tape should touch the surfaces, picking up small particles from surfaces that the bee touches.

After buzzing around for a few minutes, bring the tape back inside and remove from your child’s wrist. Place the clear tape onto a piece of paper. Hold the water-filled circle over the tape on the paper. Look through it like a magnifying glass. Did your bee pick up any small particles? What colors, shape, and size did you pick up? Do the particles look like dust, dirt, or something else? Imagine if you were a bee – what would happen if these were pollen grains? Just like you picked up things with your sticky tape, bees pick up pollen from flowers with their fuzzy body and legs.

Did your “bee” pick up any small particles? What colors, shapes, and sizes did you collect?