This week was our bear/hibernation theme. Lots of fun! If you have not read this book, you must! It is HILARIOUS! (Especially the ending... loved it! haha) Here are some of the nonfiction books we read this week to help us fill in our bear chart. We looked at these four types of bears: brown, black, polar, and panda. Here is the chart we created: When we talked about what bears ate, we did this fun little taste test/graphing activity that came from Rachelle over at What the Teacher Wants! Check out her bear unit here... super cute! I wish I had more time to do all of the activities. We tasted strawberry jam, tuna fish, and honey on crackers. We graphed our favourite bear food. Also included in Rachelle's unit, students coloured in their own graph and then answered questions about it. During our reading/writing time, we read the book "Goldilocks and the Three Bears". We compared it to the book "Growl!" and did a little T-chart about real vs. fantasy. The next day we read "The Three Snow Bears" and compared it with Goldilocks in a Venn Diagram. You can download the student version by clicking the picture below. We have been working on addition and just started talking about "Tens Partners". We created this rainbow anchor chart to help us remember them! In Rachelle's bear unit, she has this cute activity called "Bears in a Cave". One partner closes their eyes, the other partner uses bear counters (I used Teddy Graham crackers) and puts some in each circle. They write the total in the square at the end and then covers up one of the circles with a "cave" (paper cup or bowl). The other partner guesses how many bears are in the cave. You can use any number of bears. I had mine use all ten bears, so the sum always stayed 10. This was great practice for the "Tens Partners". When we started talking about hibernation, we read a book called "All About Hibernation". Then we created a large poster called "Where do animals go in the winter?". I got this idea from the very creative Amy over at Fun 4 Kids. See all of her winter animal ideas here! My students coloured the large background poster. Then they coloured the animals, cut them out with the labels, and glued them into the correct winter home. Then we added some cotton balls for snow! Super cute! If you would like a copy of the poster, click the pictures below. I print the background on white 11 x 17" paper. The animals/labels are on half of an 8.5 x 11". Amy also had a poem on her blog called "Winter Animals". It has some cute actions to go with it. We practiced the poem all week, then today we glued it into our poetry journals and illustrated it. Click above to download the poem. And last, but not least, we read the Bill Martin Jr. / Eric Carle books, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear", "Polar Bear, Polar Bear", and "Panda Bear, Panda Bear". Kids love the fun rhythm of these books. If you haven't checked out Mrs. Kacey @ Doodle Bugs Teaching, go there now! She has some amazing "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" centres and activities for FREE. Check here and here. I created an art lesson to go with these books. There is a simple pattern to use and you can create any of the four bears: brown, black, polar, or panda. Students use plastic combs (or a piece of cardboard) to create different paint techniques. Click on the picture below to download the full directions and patterns for free from TpT. These are the samples I created. I let the students choose any colour background. Here are my students working hard on their artwork. It was actually a pretty easy project to get all together. We did the painting one day and the assembly the next day. Here is the finally picture of them all together. (Our class is called 1T by the way, so the bulletin board makes sense....) They did such a good job! Although I don't know why a few of my bunnies thought that a blue marker was a good choice to use to draw the whole face.... hehe Have a great weekend, everybody!