Picasso Preschooler: BEAR WEEK CONTINUES

We are having so much fun with our bear unit of study.

Today we read this funny story about a bear, a girl, lots of fear, and how they worked it all out with a little help from mom.

Mom encourages the little girl in our story to write letters to the bear in the closet asking him to go away. After she does, the bear answers back and a funny friendship begins.

The bear in our story goes on vacation when the little girl asks him to leave, so I explained to my students that he comes to my house for part of his vacation and, in fact, has just arrived this morning. We, of course, can not see him as he is very shy but he hangs out in our hall closet. I had my nephew go through several times knocking on the closet door and the children came running to see if they could get a glimpse of our elusive bear buddy.

Amazingly two did spot him a couple of times.

"He's big and he's black and he has very scary eyes."

"He's brown and he has sharp teeth and claws but he was smiling so I think he is nice."

LOL Love their imaginations. Love feeding those imaginations.

We took a vote on whether he should stay of go and it was decided, he can stay, especially when I explained he loves to leave treats for his friends who write him a letter.

Of course we all clambered to write the bear letters. I had these special note cards waiting,

The kids loved writing the bear notes. When they woke from nap they found a basket of goodies left for them from the bear~ Baggies of Teddy Grahams with a note that said, "Thanks for all my notes. I really like you guys. Let's be friends."

It was decided that he could stay and we would all be friends.

In between all the Dear Bear fun we played with these bear play-dough mats.

They had so much fun!

Our shape for this month is circle so we made a circle bear. I showed the children a bag full of different sized circles and asked them if they thought I could turn them into a bear. "NO!" was their resounding response. They sat and watched in amazement as they watched me create a bear from my bag full of circles. I sat the bag of flannel circles on the floor along with my felt covered board and let the kids remake the bear through out the day.

I called them, one at a time, to the art table to make this paper bear for art.

Each told me a bear story to go along with their circle bear.

If I had a bear friend I would bring him home with me and feed him apples and let him play in my room with me and sleep in my bed with me but when my mommy saw him she would yell and tell him, "GET OUT!"

If I had a bear friend I would play with him in my yard and let him eat pizza with me. Pepperoni pizza has circles. We would eat all the circles and I would let him sleep in my bed with me and my elephant. Mommy would laugh when she saw my bear friend.

If I had a bear friend he would come to my house and play with my video game with me. I would feed him hot dogs and peanuts. I would let him sleep in my bed with me but my mommy would say, "No bears in the house."

We enjoyed some bear math. I made these mats

and gave each child a baggie full of gummy bears and let them enjoy bear math time.

They had a ball! Of course their favorite part of gummy bear math was

subtraction. ha ha ha

Next we made bear shaped All About Me books.

My name is D. I am three-years-old. My favorite color is green. My favorite person is my mommy. My favorite thing to play at Ms. Pamela's are Legos.

My name is C. I am three-years-old. My favorite color is blue. My favorite person is mommy. My favorite thing to play with at Ms. Pamela is ball.

My name is C. I am two-years-old. My favorite color is red. My favorite person is my mommy. My favorite thing to play at Ms. Pamela's is play-dough.

If you go out in the woods today it's better to stay at home.

If you go out in the woods today, you'd better not go alone.

For every bear that ever there was

is gathering there today because

today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.