Little Beans: TELL ME A STORY - WE ARE GOING ON A BEAR HUNT

We did a special holiday programme during the last three weeks of school - TELL ME A STORY. The stories covered were :

We Are Going on a Bear Hunt
The Elves and the Shoemaker
Louder Lili
Green Eggs and Ham
How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

These stories were chosen as they gave us the opportunity to explore many genres, at the same time there were many interesting activities that we can do with the children. Lots of hands-on activities, laughter and experiences that we shared.

The first story was We Are Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. It was about a family that went on a bear hunt, overcoming many obstacles, finally finding a bear in a narrow cave and then running for their lives! Illustration by Helen Oxenberg is beautiful and the animation brought the story to life! Wonders of the internet .....The link to the youtube video is below. Look out for the story retelling by Michael Rosen as well - the children, even the 2-year olds, loved to read along with him.

http://youtu.be/hb-nTnriTP8

Below are some of the activities which we did in line with this book:

The main theme board that sequences the journey of the family on the bear hunt.
Children of Little Beans helped create this beautiful board.

Our illustration of the family minus the elder sister and dog - beautiful, isn't it?
Thanks to Teacher Ang and Justin who drew and coloured them.

The description of each part of the journey. Note the adjectives as well as the onomatopoeia
of the sound the grass makes.

The cold river made with blue and white cellophane paper. The children randomly stuck the
paper onto the river, making it alive with the splashing of water.

The yucky mud made with plasticine!

The big dark forest - the children painstakingly cut the leaves and glued them onto the branches.
The effect was beautiful and so spontaneous!

The snowstorm made with cotton wool and Christmas snowflakes.

The cave made from newspaper and a teddy bear!

That's the theme board. We also created two versions for the children to make. The booklet for the 3 and 4 year olds:

And, for the 5 and 6 year-olds, their booklet is more detailed with a simple sentence to reinforce their reading skills. They also made their own storyboard where they can move the child and bear along the strip of places.

We walked through the grass.

We waded through the river.

We tromped through the mud.

We tripped through the forest.

We shivered through the snowstorm.

We peeked into a cave and we saw a bear!

The storyboard.

We had fun watching the animated book and the retelling of the story by Michael Rosen.

Following the action to the story.

See the delight on the faces as they follow the reading by Rosen.

And to end off the activities to We Are Going on a Bear Hunt, we made bear cookies! Though not really delicious, we had a good time baking and wrapping the cookies.