Bears,bears everywhere!

I would like to give a warm welcome to Leo who joined our class from China. He is a lovely boy who has quickly become part of the group.

From start to finish our IPC unit on bears has been super fun and filled with learning! I think I have quite a few bear specialists in my class now! During our work on bears the children’s learning has covered many subjects such as geography, nature, language and arts and crafts.

We began the unit with our entry point which was a teddy bear picnic. The children themselves wrote about the entry point which is displayed in our classroom. They prepared sandwiches and fruit for the picnic, which took place in the gym (due to rainy weather conditions!) along with the middle and lower pre-primary classes. We enjoyed a yummy picnic with our teddy bears followed by bear games and races.

Back in the class we made little beds with blankets for our teddies!

The children made beautiful bear portraits of their own bears using wax crayons, they are becoming great little artists!

The children have learnt about the 8 species of bears – the Asian black bear, the American black bear, the brown bear, the Giant Panda, the Polar bear, the Sloth bear, the Sun bear and the Spectacled bear!  We have had many circle times learning about these bears and where they live. They have loved situating their habitats on the world map. The children have worked very hard making their own fact book on bears. This work has not only been great for all the knowledge they have gained but also for their reading and writing skills. I hope you enjoy looking at these books with your children and finding out all they know.

The children have been very creative over the past few weeks making pictures of panda bears, making a model of an American black bear, making bear masks, making trees and a river filled with fish to create a real forest area where bears could live! They loved playing in this area fishing and playing in our bear cave! Ying Ying brought some bamboo sticks to school to show the children what the Panda bear loves to eat, they enjoyed cutting their own piece of bamboo with Mr Claude!

Having read the story of ‘Goldilocks and the three bears’ the children loved making and tasting porridge!

As the weather was so lovely this week we took our bear role play area outside, some of the children drew maps of the world to use in search of bears, different parts of the garden became different parts of the world! It was a pleasure to watch them playing and communicating together.

What a better way to celebrate our exit point than go to the zoo to see real bears! We had a wonderful time and amazing weather!

And now for tomorrow our Easter baskets are waiting to be filled, that is, if the Easter bunny comes!

I would also like to congratulate all the children on a great performance in our international festival! They did us proud! Well done! Have a lovely Spring holiday everyone!