Bears are Everywhere!

After two storytime flops, I’m back this week with a hit: Bears.  Animal storytimes almost always go over well.  Storytime did get a little long this week, but it worked out.

BOOKS:

Xander’s Panda Party by Linda Sue Park and Sleep, Big Bear, Sleep by Maureen Wright.

I wish that one of these books wasn’t so rhyme-y, because they’re both kind of rhythmy, rhyme-y books.  I like to switch my books up.  One with maybe some rhymes, one straight, but I just loved both of these stories so much.   Big Bear was a hit.  The kids loved that he drove the Jeep and was scaring the scouts.  Xander appeals to the word loving adult in me – I love the different rhythms and the way that Park uses wonderful, alliterative phrasing.  “Xander sat and chewed bamboo.  He changed his plans and point of view.”  The kids liked identifying the different animals, but they were a little antsy at the end of this one.

SONG:

We didn’t actually sing a song; we did the call and response Going on a Bear Hunt (which has always seemed like more of a chant to me than a song) based on this Michael Rosen video.  The kids really enjoyed this one (and the parents did too since most of them knew the bulk of it).  I was a little worried that it would be too long (we went through grass, a river, mud, a forest and the cave), but they needed two different place repetitions before they really “got it.”  I will DEFINITELY do this again.

CRAFT:

Panda puppets!  Back a bit to product rather than process, but I like that this incorporates multiple craft/fine motor skills – the coloring, the gluing, and peeling the sticky tape on the googly eyes.  I got this idea from No Time for Flashcards