"Hi Asher, I just wanted to send a quick thank you for leading the 1st grade bee activity. The kids loved it and it was really great." Mary Gallagher PTA PS29
Harvest Week PS29 10/31/2025
It was a super sweet way to bring in Halloween. It feels funny to write it about now, on 12/3/25 after the first big snow storm, all the leaves now frozen, brown, and fully defoliated forests. At the time though the trees were dropping there colorful leaves and it was a mad dash to collect the beautiful ones from the maples, oaks, sumac's and chestnuts. Driving around the berkshire's to find a colorful red maple in the front of someones yard descending on the ground below to swiftly fill the plastic bag like a stealth ninja avoiding detection.
And so we had the children for 45 minutes per class, six first grade classes in a row. Giving them the opportunity to sink in with us. To drop down a gear, exhale and climb aboard into the magical, mysterious and magnificent realm of the honeybee. The setting was the outer cafeteria. A bleak, multi-functional corridor space better suited for the upcoming voting booths we were set up next too then our holding of tender vulnerable hearts. Yet the creative in us seems to always find a way to the treasures of the moment and celebrate the curiosity of the 5-6 year old mind. Wonderful questions like where does beeswax come from? How is it made? From sunlight. Sunlight? What do you mean? The bees eat honey which comes from the nectar that plants have converted sunlight into sugars via photosynthesis to provide as a lure for the bees to do the work of pollination, that is then consumed, returned to the hive. Then the bees inside the hive eat the honey nectar and sweat out tiny individual flakes of wax from the glands on there abdomens. What? Yup.
We begun each session lighting a candle, taking some breaths, doing some body movement to ground and settle, sharing gratitude and introducing ourselves acknowledging our matriarchal lineages calling in the oldest known relative on our maternal side and where they came from. My great grand mother Hettie Leigh from Vienna, Austria. We do this to acknowledge the matriarchal lineage that is the beehive, its grace, organization and divine feminine wisdom.
And so we dipped colorful leaves into hot wax. hot piping wax. That's scary. for teachers and students alike. Just like going into a beehive with no veil on. Courage, poise and grace. To acknowledge the fear and not be held back by it, controlled by it. That is the medicine here. We're not just dipping leaves into wax, we are supporting groups to move through difficult thresholds in strong safe containers.
