Bears on boats

Orrin working on some art .

For small group today we played with our counting bears. I had a block and I said, " This is my boat. I am going to take 4 bears for a boat ride." I then counted the bears one by one and put them on the boat. I drove the boat around the table and told a little story . " My bears are going to drive across the lake and have a picnic on the other side. They will have bread and honey . Bears like honey. " When I finished each child took a turn to load their boat and take a boat ride and tell a story. We had bears go to fun city and some ate pizza. This activity not only was a math activity but a language activity. After all our bears took a ride we lined up the boats and discussed which boat had the most and which had the least amount of bears on it. Don't assume that kids cant handle big description words - they can. That is how we expand their language. We were also able to use words like more, less and equal.

During circle time today we read a book called " I Dont Care". It is about a little bear that everyone keeps telling him " winter is coming , you need to get ready" but each time he answered " I dont care.." Of course at the end of the book he falls asleep because that is what bears do when it turns cold. This enabled us to talk about hibernation.

We also looked at a picture of a little girl with a fake arm. Somehow she had lost her arm. We show these pictures atleast weekly and talk about them. We talk about how people with disabilities might feel and how we should act around them. We talk about what things might be nice to say and what things would not be nice.

Instead of having our teddy bear picnic on Friday we are doing it on Thursday. We are having visitors on Friday and the day would be too hectic.