We’re Going on a ‘Teddy’ Bear Hunt

We have a gorgeous book which comes with a CD that tells the story of the adventure of going on a bear hunt.  My kids have played this CD over many times as I watch them pretend to walk through long, wavy grass and run away from a bear.  So I thought I would bring this story to life some more by creating the different scenes in the book.

Playing with songs and books help prepare children for future learning and teach them beginning pre-reading skills.  Re-enacting we’re going on a bear hunt is a fun activity we can do with our kids to help promote this learning through play.

The Book: 

‘Bear Hunt’ comes with a CD which is read by Noni Hazelhurst with Benita Collings, Alister Smart and George Spartels who are from ABC4Kid’s television show Play School.  Illustrated by Patricia Mullins.  Published by The Five Mile Press Pty Ltd

There is another version of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ written by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury.

Let’s Play 

Uh-oh.  (Uh-oh)

Grass. (Grass)

Long wavy grass.  (Long wavy grass).

We can’t go over it.  (We can’t go over it).

We can’t go under it.  (We can’t go under it.)

We’ll have to go through it!

Swish, swish, swish, swish!

To make our “Long Wavy Grass” we opened up a box so that both ends were open like a tunnel.  When the box is open like this, it can become unstable so we strengthened it with masking tape.  We also placed a large pillow on either side of the box to help hold it up firm for when the kids would crawl through it.  We then sticky taped green streamers down over the two openings of the box.  We also placed our green mat inside the box but you could alternatively use a green towel or blanket.

Uh-oh.  (Uh-oh)

Mud. (MUd)

Thick oozy mud.  (Thick oozy mud).

We can’t go over it.  (We can’t go over it).

We can’t go under it.  (We can’t go under it.)

We’ll have to go through it!

Squelch, squelch, squelch, squelch!

To make our thick oozy mud, we simply placed a number of cushions and pillows on the floor and laid a brown blanket on top imitating the thick oozy mud.

Uh-oh.  (Uh-oh)

A cave. (A cave)

A dark gloomy cave.  (A dark gloomy cave).

We can’t go over it.  (We can’t go over it).

We can’t go under it.  (We can’t go under it.)

We’ll have to go through it!

Tiptoes, tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe!

To create our cave, we a placed a brown fitted sheet over our dining chairs which were arranged in the shape of a cave.  I used a fitted sheet because I find this clings better to the dining chairs and is less likely to slide off.

Let’s Learn 

Learning Experiences:

• Encourages and promotes imaginative play and creativity.
• Getting little bodies moving through dance and rhythm.
• Develop and extend vocabulary.
• Rhyme – understanding rhyme in our spoken language helps children learn to read.
• Rhythm- helps children to remember words and develop auditory memory skills.
• Phonemic awareness – hearing and understanding that words are made up of individual sounds and other word patterns.

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