We love Karma Wilson’s “Bear” books. With winter right around the corner, we’re busy planning lessons around her sweet little story, Bear Snores On. It’s perfect for this time of year… cold air, short days, snowy skies… Bear is ready to hibernate!
And he does. In fact, he’s so good at it, he doesn’t even notice his forest friends have made their way to his cozy den to escape all the winter stuff happening outside. They make a little fire. They brew some tea. And they party. All the while, in total oblivion, Bear snores on.
And on, and on, and on.
ACTIVITIES FOR BEAR SNORES ON
As you pull your read-alouds for the winter season, we think this one deserves a spot in the stack. It has value as a piece of literature, providing opportunities to talk about setting, characters, and events. But it also lends itself well to nonfiction topics like seasons, hibernation, and different types of animals.
We love finding ways to tie our standards to something that feels crafty, especially since we see value in helping children develop their fine motor movements.
This little project requires the children to assemble a complete sentence by noticing features like capital letters and punctuation marks, while recognizing sight words and learning new vocabulary. (Some animals hibernate in the winter.)
Then, they get to color, cut, and glue a few mammals in a fun lift-the-flap element. It’s a fun way to combine sentence-building with art. If some of your children are a little more independent in terms of their creativity and artistic ability, you could challenge them to draw their own animals to place inside the cave. This is a great option if you’re looking for more variety and a way to differentiate the activity.
SNACK TIME
And, I’m just being honest here, we love to eat. We love to make food and we love to eat it. So, obviously, we have a snack idea to follow the reading of Bear Snores On. It’s a sweet treat, so save it for the last hour of the day, lol.
To make this little hibernation snack, each child will need:
- one graham cracker
- a bit of vanilla frosting
- one powdered sugar donut
- a chocolate teddy bear cracker
- tiny marshmallow bits
We’ve written a set of simple directions with step-by-step photos and included them in the resource. You can make this snack without the detailed instructions (it’s that simple), but by using the pages in the resource, you can teach or review reading a procedural text… great if you’ve been working on “how-to” writing formats.
He’s so cute! Possibly too cute. My now-grown daughter said, “Mom, I’d have a really hard time eating this.” (This is a girl who cried on her 5th birthday because she didn’t want to eat a special pancake I made her for breakfast. She wanted to save it under her pillow! What a muffin she was. Is.)
Want to start planning your lessons? You can preview all of these ideas and a few more right HERE. We think you and your kids will have a lot of fun with Bear Snores On… go check it out!
MORE WINTER FUN
Every winter, we have TACKY THE PENGUIN in our read-aloud lineup. The cuteness of penguins never goes out of style, but there’s more to this silly book than cute waddling birds. The message about embracing individuality is too important to be missed. Check it out!
BOOKMARK FOR LATER
For our first and second grade friends, this is another one of our winter favorites, YETIS ARE THE WORST by Alex Willan. This title is also part of a series we lovingly call “The Worst,” … Elves Are the Worst, Dragons Are the Worst, Unicorns Are the Worst, etc. If you’re a fan, save this post to read later. This series is adorable.
Until next time, happy teaching!
