We're Going on a Bear Hunt

For the past four days, we've been rowing We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen.  This has been our favorite book so far.  The girls have loved the hand motions that we learned to go along with the story. (Thanks Michelle!) 

• Grass in the meadow - rub hands together to create a swishing sound 

• Crossing the river - do the breast stroke with your arms
• Going through mud - slowly pull feet (or arms) up as if stuck in mud
• Going through the forest - climb a tree
• While in the snowstorm - pretend to shiver
• While in the cave - pretend to feel carefully in front of your face with your hands

• When you find the bear - feel the fur on the bear's face

The girls asked me to read this story over and over and over again.  I can't say that has been the case with all the books we have rowed.  You can hear the story told by the author, by clicking here.

We did lots of activities to go along with this book.

Hide and Seek Bear
I put three identical bowls in front of Ella.  I hid an empty honey bear under one of the bowls, mixed the bowls around, and asked Ella to find the bear.

 Alphabet Match-Up
Ella matched lower and upper case alphabet letters.

Shape Match
Ella matched shapes on black and white bears.  I decided not to color these in, hoping it'd be more of a challenge to her, but it didn't seem to be.  She did like this game and asked to play it more than once.

Map and Find Bear Hunt
Arin is learning about mapping skills in her geography book, so Andy drew a map of our backyard.  Then, he hid two teddy bears in the backyard.

  He labeled them on the map with different colors.

 Arin had to read the map and find the bears.  This was by far her favorite activity.  Andy used erasable colored pencils to mark the bears' locations, so we were able to use the same map multiple times.  Arin also took turns hiding the bears and marking their locations on the map.

Ella was asleep during most of this game, but when she woke up, Arin hid the bears for her and we played "hot or cold".

Just For Fun:
The girls played a "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" Game.  I painted rocks and added bear stickers for the playing pieces.

Math:
Arin practiced subtraction with these teddy bear worksheets.

Ella worked on patterns.

Arin learned about even and odd numbers.  I am sure we touched on this last year, but she had forgotten all about it, so this was a nice refresher.

Family Portrait:
Arin drew a picture of her family.  The one with the big purple belly is me (pregnant).

Sight Words:
I printed a teddy bear template.  Inside the circles, I wrote several of the pre-primer sight words.  I had bought sight word word strips from the Dollar Tree a few weeks ago.  So I placed them face down in front of Arin.  She drew a card, read it if possible, then found the word on her teddy bear.  Once she found it, she marked it with her Do-A-Dot markers.

Alphabet Search and Find:
I printed the same template as shown above for Ella.  Instead of writing sight words, I wrote alphabet letters for her.  I gave her our lettered Scattergories die.  She rolled the die and spotted the letter on the teddy bear.  Then, she marked it off with the Do-A-Dot markers. When I wrote the letters in the circles, I didn't realize there wasn't a "Q" on the die.  There also wasn't an "U", but we were easily able to change that to a "W".

Categorizing:
Ella categorized bears as to whether they were "Living" or "Non-Living".  Because they were all pictures, she wanted to tell me they were all "non-living" (come on mom, can't you see there's not a "real" bear in front of me).  :)

Cut & Paste:
Arin cut and glued a bear together.  I had planned to use this bear to write her narration on, but I completed forgot about that until I was writing up this post.  So, tomorrow, she will narrate the story and we will add it to this bear :)

Copywork:
Arin worked on copywork.  First, she traced the words.  Then, she wrote them on her own. 

Science:
We did a simple science experiment.  First, we measured a gummy bear.  It was 3/4" long. 

Then, we put gummy bears in different solutions to soak overnight. 

Arin made predicitons about what would happen to the bears.  She guessed the following:
~ soaked in water: grow
~ soaked in salt water: shrink
~ soaked in apple juice: stay same
~ soaked in milk: grow
~ soaked in vinegar: grow

What really happened:
~ soaked in water: grew to 1"
~ soaked in salt water: completely dissolved
~ soaked in apple juice: grew to 1.25"
~ soaked in milk: grew to 1"
~ soaked in vinegar: shrank to 1/2" (it looks a lot smaller than that, but I measured it several times and it was just barely under the 1/2", so we rounded up).

I made up a simple recording sheet, which Arin used to write in her predictions and the actual outcome. Why did we get these results?  I am not exactly sure.  I am assuming it has something to do with the gelatin in the candy, but I could be way off on that :)

We got almost everything done that I wanted to accomplish this week.  I had planned some more sensory activities for the girls - like walking through mud, into a lake, through the woods, playing with snow (shaved ice), etc., but we ran out of time before completing those activities.  We have a super busy September ahead of us, so I have not decided if we'll be rowing a book next week or not.

Linked To:
Preschool Corner (&5K too)