We're Going on a Bear Hunt

I need to step it up in the craft department. I have 2 kids who LOVE crafts and truth be told, the other night they snuck down to the basement to "craft". Their version of crafting included watercolors, old business letter head paper, and glitter...handfuls of glitter! So, after I de-glitterized the basement and banned them from all paint, I thought that maybe I should offer a few more mommy lead crafts so that they don't have to sneak off to get their fix.

So, here's some fun that we're working on at our house. If you're not a big fan of this book, copy the idea and use it with any book that your kids love. I'm happy to report that it promotes literacy,(you can use that line to impress other moms, pediatricians, and teachers) and your kids can actually play with it and re-tell the story when they're done.

We're Going on a Bear Hunt is a classic children's book. The repetition of the text makes it an easy read for early readers! Here's what we did:








I stapled together 6 pages of construction paper, 1 for the title page and then 1 page for each of the "oh no" adventures....grass, river, mud, forest, snowstorm, and cave.









For my 3 year old, I made the backgrounds and for my 6 year old, I helped. Then, using a paper trimmer, make a slit in each background. Be sure to leave a margin so you do not cut the paper all the way to the edges.










Color people shaped popsicle sticks to use as bear hunting characters. You can also glue on a paper person to a regular popsicle stick.










Have your kids draw or sticker in details to the pages. We plan to add flowers to the grass page, foot prints to the mud page, forest animals to the forest page, fish to the river page, and a bear, of course, to our cave page.





Kids can re-tell the story using their own book! Help them slide their characters through the slot on each page of the bear hunt. Encourage them to use the pattern, "Oh no! ________ We can't go over it. We can't go under it. Oh no, we have to go through it!"




Happy bear hunting!

This post is a part of Things I Love Thursday.