Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Brown Bear Activites

So as I mentioned previously, we checked the book Brown, Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? out of the library the other day and my son was instantly enamored with it. He loves to read books, but the amount of times he has wanted to read it each day has surpassed previous records. So in light of that, I decided to find some brown bear activites to do around the house.

By far the easiest (and most entertaining for him) was making characters for the felt board. These are actually printables from 1+1+1=1, intended to be a puzzle, but I just cut them out, reinforced each side with clear packing tape, and taped velcro from a disposable diaper on the back. Instant felt board fun! What I like about these printables is that they actually are the same pictures used in the book, which makes it easier for my son to recognize. We have done several things with them today:


--he has just played with them on his own (calling them by name, making animal sounds, carrying them around the house)
--I went through the whole Brown Bear schpiel with them, reenacting the book
--I asked him "where is the green frog?" (etc.) and had him point at the right animal
--While we were reading the book I would stop at each animal and ask him to find the cutout that matched, again, "where is the blue horse?" and he would get it for me
--I tried to do a color activity with pompoms but he wasn't interested.


He seriously loves these cutouts, I have a feeling that they will get worn out even though I reinforced them!


Another fun activity was that I downloaded these tiny cutouts from Making Learning Fun  that were intended for use in an eye spy bottle (which I made later). First, though, I put the cutouts into our rice bin but I didn't do much hiding because I wasn't sure if he would find them.


Owen had a lot of fun pulling out all the different characters, naming them, making noises, etc. I enjoy having him do this activity while I clean the kitchen because it keeps him occupied and in sight and I don't feel like I am being neglectful even though I am not really participating. An unintentional bonus of this was that he did less throwing of the rice since he was so into the cutouts.



Next I made the eye spy bottle, and I think it is really cute, but I think that if you make it, you should print out two copies of the pictures because it was hard to see the animals when they were facing the wrong way.  I don't know if I am explaining that right, but I plan on printing out another copy so that there is a picture on the front and back of each piece so it will be easier to play with.  Otherwise I thought it was a great activity and a great idea!  I have tried a bunch of times today to find the page on the Making Learning Fun where the list of printables came from but all I have is the link to the eye spy bottle, so here it is for you.  

We also got started on a mini brown bear coloring book that will end up in our tot book at the end of this week


As well as played with these number cards.  Owen doesn't really count with me (although he counts with his daddy, I think) but I often hear him "counting"... Usually it goes "three, four, five, nine.."  and thats about it.  so cute ;)  Both the number cards and the coloring book can also be found on the 1+1+1=1 website here.  If you are wondering, the #9 card is too dirty from lunch to be displayed here ;)


All in all, I think it was a successful day--Owen was so happy to have so much brown bear stuff to play with!  I really enjoyed to have an easy theme to work with...  I liked working it around the book and hope I can come up with other book-themes in the future!
Tot School

5 comments:

  1. This is such a fabulous idea, I wish I could do more things with my 15 month old like this but he still mouths some of his learning toys so I'm skeptical about doing things with paper.
    ~Your little one is ADORABLE!!~

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  2. Ohh, love this! I may steal the felt board idea!

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  3. You've come up with such great activities. I love when they get excited about reading books...even if it means you read it for what feels like the millionth time!

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  4. Fun ideas! I like that he can play with the felt characters. Things like that really help to make a story magical for a little kid.

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  5. I love the cutouts in the rice. I think that is an activity that my boys would love to do!

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