More Bear Ideas for Grade 1

Inside: Lots of bear activities for first grade.

We have now wrapped up our Bear unit. Well, except for our biscuit bears which we’ll do next week. We’re going to add a red hot heart to their lil’ bodies to tie it in with Valentine’s Day.

On to the bear activities.

Art

My teaching partner had the kids make these cutie-pies. They painted their paper dark brown (tempera paint) and then scratched the wet paint to give it some texture. Once the papers were dry they traced the various bear parts then cut them out and glued them onto their habitat pictures.

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Research

The kids worked together with my partner to research and write about Grizzly Bears.

They also made these great bear caves out of paper bags.

Reading Response

I read the kids Bedtime for Bear, a very sweet book about a big ol’ grizzly trying to get ready for his winter hibernation.

Then they wrote about the beginning, middle and end of the story.

Writing

Early on in the unit I had all the kids bring their teddy bears to school. We used them in Writing and Math. Here you can see their bear descriptions.

If you click here you can grab the bear template we used.

After the kids wrote their descriptions they travelled around the room and read their pieces to 3 other people. This was a super successful way to share their writing AND to get some more reading practice. I’ll definitely do this more often.

Math

We used snap cubes to measure the length of our bears.

And then they recorded their findings.

Not everyone had a bear. One little guy brought in his moose!

We also graphed our bears according to size.

And recorded that, also.

Gratitude

Finally (because I always like to teach good manners whenever I can) everyone wrote thank you notes to our guest, the Conservation Officer.

If you missed the earlier post about our bear unit, be sure to check it out!

Don’t you just LOVE this face?

Thanks for dropping by. And happy Family Day weekend to all my BC friends!