Week of September 27 - Bears

The kids haven't really been on the same page this week as far as doing activities with me, partly because they all keep taking turns being sick. So while one kiddo watches a show while resting, I work with another kiddo on a project. So this week I'm going activity by activity instead of day by day!

Brown Bear, Brown Bear Storyboard

This is a bit of a variation on this Brown Bear, Brown Bear Sequencing I found. I got a slightly larger piece of wood for the kiddos and had Charlotte practice spelling out the names of each animal/teacher/kids. I placed the book in front of her so she could flip a page, find the word she wanted to spell and then copy it, rather than spelling things out for her. For Clesse, we just did the beginning letter of each animal/children/teacher. What I love about this is the kids can play with it over and over again. The clothespins come on and off and the kiddos can either try to remember the order by memory, or look over at their sticker letters for clues as to what goes there.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear Storybook

Another project related to the Brown Bear, Brown Bear book by Bill Martin Jr. (which Clesse LOVES) was to make our own versions. Clesse was happy to go with the classic and we worked on remembering the colors of the animals (and looking at the book if Clesse wasn't quite sure) and then coloring them to match. I figured Sis would think this was too easy, so she made her own version, "Unicorn, Unicorn, what do you see?" and I'm genuinely impressed with this girl's drawings. They both proudly showed them to their baby brother and read them aloud to him. And he loved them!

Rainbow Counting Bears

I LOVE these for all ages. We sort, count, pattern and do all kinds of activities with these bad boys.

I keep them in a diaper wipe container so that littles can push them into the slot and work on their finger strength. Also, Koko is always wanting to open and close the lid to the wipes, so this way he gets his fill of that and I don't have to restack a bunch of wet wipes after he inevitably pulls them all out!

Gummy Bear Counting Game

I printed out some numbers on circles and laminated them and placed them into a muffin tin. Then the kids either rolled the die with colors or used the spinner to determine where they put their gummy bear on their turn. Each part of the muffin tin is numbered 1-6, so once that spot is "full" (i.e. the slot labeled 3 has 3 gummy bears in it), the next person to get the matching color or number gets to have all the gummy bears!

We didn't quite finish this game - Clesse was a little too excited to eat the gummy bears 😆

We're Going on a Bear Hunt Map

I modified this bear hunt map activity a little bit to go along with "We're Going on a Bear Hunt". The kids and I absolutely adore this book, and I loved this concept of sequencing by creating a map. After Charlotte drew her house on the map, I had her guess where the family was going to go next to go along with the book, then we would reference the book to see if she was right. She did really well! She chose a gummy bear to be her bear in the cave (luckily this one isn't quite as scary as the one in the book! 😉)

Dress-Up Bears

I nabbed this Melissa & Doug toy from a secondhand store when Charlotte was little and obsessed with Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It really is a neat little puzzle, working on shape and size recognition, emotions, clothing for different situations, etc. My personal favorite is to put them all in pajamas with sleepy faces 😴). Another thing I love is that it's long enough that two kids can be playing with it at the same time without bumping into each other too much.