B for Bear~

I'm starting the letter "B" with the kids today, and the first word is "Bear"~ I decided to teach them about polar bears.

Polar Bear

Polar Bear, Polar Bear, turn around,
Polar Bear, Polar Bear, touch the ground.
Polar Bear, Polar Bear, growl real loud,
Polar Bear, Polar Bear, sit on the ground.

I brought two books with me, one is about all sorts of different polar animals, and it has a few pages of facts about polar bears. Did you know that their fur is actually not white, but clear? The sun reflects it and makes it white! Also, each piece of fur is hollow, and that makes it light, so when polar bears swim, the water won't add too much weight on them. It's also very easy to shake off the water. I never knew that before I read this book! Learning is life-long. =) The second book that I brought with me is a story book called "Little Polar Bear". It's a pretty long picture book, so I wasn't sure if the kids would be up for it after reading the first book, but I brought it just in case. I started reading it, and they were pretty engaged in the story! They felt sad for the little polar bear when he got lost and was all alone. They know how it feels to miss their daddy and mommy, so they really sympathize with the character. ^^ I stopped half way through before they lose attention, and I'll continue the story for tomorrow~

After that, I showed them my sample plastic bag polar bear! It's actually not a plastic bag, but a plastic tablecloth, because I couldn't find so many white plastic bags! I showed them how to lay the piece of tablecloth on the floor or on the table (I let them decide where they wanted to work today), crumple up old magazine pages and put them in the middle of the cloth. Then I'd go around to help them tie it close. After that, I gave each of them two eyes and a nose, and they had to glue them on the polar bear's head. When they were done, I gave them pompoms with tape, so they just had to stick the ears on, and then they're done! It went better than I expected, because I did anticipate some kind of chaos. =P But it's fun, and I thought it'd be worth it even though it might get messy. I'm very happy about their use of white glue, because nobody ended up with a handful of glue! Goodjob! =)

Shriyans' polar bear:


Daniel's polar bear:


Cooper's polar bear: