Bears have been woven in to our curriculum throughout December. These creatures capture students’ imagination and lend themselves to a variety of stories and games. We are also lucky in that we share the greater forest around McCall with bears and that learning about their habits and biology is part of learning our local ecology.

Bear biology

Thanks to Snowdon Wildlife Refuge, we were able to show students examples of a black bear skull, pelt, claw, and foot print. Students noticed different features of these parts of a bear and we talked about the advantage of adaptations such as sharp teeth and claws and thick, soft fur.

Students in the 4/5 classes shared their knowledge about hibernation and even created a game we’re calling Bears Through the Seasons. Someone calls out a season and the bears have to act out what a bear is doing at that time of year; if it’s fall they’re eating voraciously, if they hear “winter,” they’ll curl up and snore.

While learning about what bears like to eat, we introduced the Venn Diagram to the Pines and Tamaracks, an opportunity for students to apply critical thinking skills in a meaningful way. More on this in our December Sorting and Comparing post. We sorted pictures of bear and human food that the students had cut out into a Venn Diagram and then glued the bear food to a Bear Dinner Plate. Students learned that bears eat moths and grass as well as berries and honey.

All the classes sampled different parts of a bear’s diet and voted for their favorite bear food. We tasted jerky, nuts, dried berries, and honey. As you can see below, the nuts were not very popular and the jerky and honey were consistent favorites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Protecting bears

We also learned that one way to help bears is to keep trash and human food safe from bears. Tamarack and Pine students sorted foods into piles for bears and humans and then put the human-only foods into a bear-proof canister. The little bears then tried to open the canister, which we learned is child-proof as well as bear-proof. See videos here and here of the Ponderosa Pines trying to open the bear canister filled with food.

Literacy

We added the words “bear” and “den” to our school alphabet book. The Pines and Tamaracks practiced writing the first letters of these words on their alphabet sheets, as well as doing some creative drawings to go with them. The Aspens and Firs enjoyed tracing Bs and Ds with dot stickers in their journals!

 

A vital piece of our literacy curriculum is sharing rich, engaging stories with our students on a daily basis. Building their excitement about our topic, and providing inspiring models of real reading. Our bear theme allowed us to do just that with classic stories such as We’re Going on Bear Hunt and more current hits like like Bear Wants More. Both of these stories have repeated phrases so that the students can participate in the telling of the story, and when the inspiration strikes, even act out the stories. Our Aspen class loved We’re Going on a Bear Hunt so much we retold the story all month, even acting it out in the forest – going through thick, bushy sagebrush and over cold “rivers” to a dark bear “cave.”

Students in our Tamarack and Pine classes enjoyed retelling the story Autumn Bear all month, adding in some percussion instruments to imitate the sound of the bear tromping through the forest. The students enjoyed taking turns being the bear, forest animals, and the ‘soundtrack.’

The Bear Unit has been interesting and lots of fun and we will surely be playing “Bear is Sleeping” and “Going on a Bear Hunt” through the rest of the school year!