The Great Bear Hunt of 2011 and S'more Bear-y Fun Adventures!

Our bears and camping unit is so much fun that it's one of the few we do for more than a week. We were bustling with activity all last week!  We went on a nature walk and collected items we found.

The next day, we glued the things we'd collected onto paper plates (with the middle cut out) to make nature wreaths.

Have you played "Button, Button, Who's Got The Button?" lately? We have!

We brought our own lunch to school had a picnic lunch outside. (This is a REALLY big deal, since we eat "family style". Many of our brothers and sisters are going to "big kid school" and get to take their lunches in really cool lunch boxes. So you see, this was a real treat!)

We had our "Great Bear Hunt of 2011". We actually had several over the two weeks, because they were so much fun that the kids kept requesting them ~~~ and the exercise was great!

  

 

We patterned with Honeycomb cereal, Teddy Grahams and Goldfish throughout the week, which made for some tasty snacks!

The kids brought some great items for show and tell: flashlights, lanterns, first aid kits, a compass and even a toy cooler!

In small groups, we played a little game called "10 in the Bed". We rolled the dice and added or subtracted bears from the "bed".

Another small group activity was making shapes with mini-marshmallows and toothpicks. This was a great skill review for shapes, worked our fine motor skills and eye hand coordination and also allowed for a lot of individual creativity at the same time.

The highlight of our week was our pajama party camp out and making s'mores.  (There's nothing better than a day when it's perfectly acceptable to wear your pajamas to school!) Camping in our pj's was lots of fun!

Making the s'mores was almost as much fun as eating them!

We're Having a "Bear"-y Good Time in Pre-K!

We began our "Camping and Bears" unit this week. Most of our units this year will last a week, but there are so many learning opportunities and fun things to do with this unit that I have kept it as an extended unit this year. We transformed our dramatic play area into a sort of state park, with both a lodge and a camping area.

We counted and sorted colored counting bears. A few of us even made patterns, too!

We graphed Gummy Bears in small groups. I found my graph over at Itty-Bitty Bookworms on their Free Printables page.

This was so cute. As I walked around to make sure there were (legible) names on each paper, I came across this little pair of smiley faces. I try to remember to ask children about their work rather than assume. I would have guessed  (but thankfully didn't) that this was the student attempting to "write" his name. As I looked over at it, my friend said, "Mrs. Ayn, I wrote the directions so kids would know what to do!"

One of our large group literacy activities was this "Erase-a-Rhyme" from Mrs. Meacham's Classroom: Erase-A-Rhyme page. I believe the Bear Rhyme was authored by Jessica, but there are several authors and rhymes available.

Our teddy bears played in centers with us,

And we even brought our teddy bears as "Special Guests" to our circle time activities this week.

In addition to reading a variety of Goldilocks versions, we've retold the story in a variety of fashions.
On the flannelboard,

With props and toy figures,

And as actors with our bears!

Some of our "bear"-y favorite reads have included several different versions of the Goldilocks tale, bear stories by favorite authors and a few stories about camping. Here's what some of what we're reading during story time and in our library center.

          

       

   

~~Sorry! The widget is not working properly.I'll try to come back or include them in one of the future bear-y special posts. ~~

Look for a post coming soon about our Great Bear Hunt and later about the wonderful activities we've got planned for next week ~ we'll be camping out in our pj's, going on a nature walk, making s'mores and having a picnic lunch. Let the fun and learning continue!