Bear Week

Welcome to Bear Week!  I made sure that we had a great picture (cut from a magazine) to put under the Theme Heading at our Circle Time area.  We talked about that picture every single day.  On the first day (no pictures) we talked about hibernation and watched a few videos from YouTube.  We just did a quick search on the site and found a couple of cartoons plus a couple real bears hibernating.  He loved it!

Once we finished watching the video, we talked about where bears hibernate.  He told me in a cave, so we built a cave together with blankets in the basement.

He then went to his bedroom, found a pillow and a blanket and crawled in to "hibernate" for a while.

The next day, we made a collage bear.  I found a simple pattern of a bear using Google Images, printed it out, gave him some scraps of felt and let him at it.  He insisted that he cut out his bear first, so that was the first step.  He then used a glue stick and glued on many colourful pieces of felt all over the bear.

One day after my daughter came home from school, I gave them some photocopied bear prints, scissors and markers and told them to colour, create and cut out the bear prints.  They worked together for about 30 minutes and then started to use their imagination to play with the footprints.  They are still playing with these simple prints five days later.  They made up a game of tag, did Yoga poses, hid them and even used them to guide each other through the basement to find a missing toy.  I love their imaginations!

We are working on the simple colours first with my son.  He knows them all, but I thought this would be a great place to start with colours so that he has 100% accuracy with one area, as he still struggles with printing and drawing shapes.

This was as simple file folder game.  It was actually premade so I just had to pull it out of my collection.  I'm not sure which book I got it from to be honest, otherwise I would post that information.  If anyone knows, please comment so I can be sure to add that information!

This was our cooking experience for the week.  We made some toast and I cut it into a circle.  I then put some globs of peanut butter on it and he used a small butter knife to spread it around.  Next, he used some pineapple for the ears, raisins for the eyes and a piece of apple for the mouth.  There are many different things you could use for the body parts (ex, bananas for the ears) but we used up what we had and it was so much fun!

This was another file folder game that I quickly made up.  I found the idea on Pinterest, but when I clicked on the link there was only a picture.  So I used a file folder and glued on a piece of blue construction paper for the pillow.  I then found a picture of a teddy bear using Google Images and printed off 10.  I then typed up the rhyme and 10 numbers and printed those off using Open Office Writer.  This game was a hit!  He even taught his sister how to play when she got home from school.

Want the simple words to the rhyme?

There were ______ in the bed

and the little one said,

"Roll over!  Roll over!"

So they all rolled over

and one fell out.

Then at the end, we sing

There were 0 in the bed

and the little ones said,

"I'm cold!  I miss you!"

So they all crawled into bed,

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

What a great week of Bears!