We’re Going On A Bear Hunt!

Personal Social an Emotional

Set the children the challenge of working together to build a cave for the bear using a variety of materials. Set up a ‘bear hunt station’. Provide backpacks, torches, binoculars, camouflage, walkie talkies and so on. Invite children to investigate the station and prepare for going on a bear hunt with their friends.

Communication and Language

Play a listening game with the children. Sit children in a circle and choose one child to curl up in the middle – this child is the ‘sleeping bear’. Once the ‘bear’ is asleep, choose someone in the circle to walk up to the bear and say, “Wake up, sleepy bear!” They then run back to their space. The ‘bear’ then says who they think woke them up. Find out more about bears and other animals that may live in a cave by exploring non-fiction books. Introduce new vocabulary, such as nocturnal and hibernation.

Physical Development

Provide fine motor activities for each setting in the story around the learning environment. You could provide green spaghetti for children to cut (grass), soil and natural mark-making tools (mud), glue and silver eco-glitter in a ziplock bag (snowstorm) and water with pipettes (river). Create an obstacle course based on the story setting in an outside area using a variety of equipment for children to explore travelling through. You may wish to deliberately add opportunities for children to climb under, over and through.

Literacy

Practise reading letters and saying sounds by setting up a letter hunt. Children can use binoculars to look for hidden letters.           

Mathematics                                                       

Create small world bear caves, numbered one to ten. Provide a range of small world bears   for children to place the matching number of bears into each cave.   Provide a cut-out of the bear's paw for children to use to measure the length of different items around the setting

Understanding the World

Cover a table with paper and provide children with pens to draw a map of the story. Invite them to create an area of map for each story setting, including the bear in the cave.   Invite children to explore the natural world around them on a walk to a local field, river or woodland area. Encourage the children to talk about what they can see, hear and feel during their own bear hunt.

Expressive Art and Design

Provide a range of materials for children to use to create their own picture of a bear.  Provide brown paint and forks, strips of brown tissue paper and soft, fluffy materials alongside glue and sticky tape. Can children describe the different techniques they used to create their bear?    Provide a range of instruments and noisemakers for children to use to add sound effects to the story. Invite children to perform individually or as a group when retelling the story.

Focused Vocabulary

Walk, walking, bear, hunt, hibernation, nocturnal, forest, over, under, through.