Bear Trioramas

Happy Boxing Day! I hope everyone had a happy and peaceful Christmas.

Just before our holiday break we wrapped up our bear unit with these trioramas.

My fabulous TOC supervised (I was home sick). I thought the kids did an amazing job!

Their task was to draw their bear’s habitat. I think maybe the polar bears under the Northern Lights are my favourites, but I’m loving the little panda bears, too.

Panda bear in bamboo forest

Polar bear under Northern lights (about to attack seal)

The kids made the bears using Crayola Model Magic.

You can get it in different colours, but we chose white. The kids with the panda and polar bears used black markers for the final details. The brown and black bears were painted. We used water colours, but next time I’ll splurge and buy acrylics.

If you’ve never used Model Magic before, it’s definitely worth the money. It’s super easy to manipulate, air dries fairly quickly and is lovely and light.

A couple of the legs fell off (we just glued them back on) so next time I might encourage the kids to make their bears from one piece of clay.

The trioramas were made from a large 11 x 14 piece of paper, cut down into an 11 inch square.

If you’re working with Kindies or Grade 1s, you’ll want to fold the paper for them (from corner to corner as you can see above).

Then cut from one corner into the centre.  It’s super easy. Just make sure the kids do all their colouring while the paper is still flat.

When ready, just slide one side of the cut section onto the other side and glue together.

I love doing trioramas (they’re way easier than getting everyone to bring in shoe boxes for dioramas) because it’s such a fun way to review the needs of bears.  I hope you give it a try!

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