Hibernation

This week we learned about what animals do in the winter time. We read several books and made a chart together to categorize animals that hibernate, migrate, or adapt. Our classroom became a hibernation station with a bear cave and bears in our sensory table. Here are a few pictures taken to capture the fun:

At one of the our art centers the children made bears. They colored the bear first, then painted glue onto the outline of a bear, and then sprinkled cocoa onto the bear. They turned out great and we displayed them on our bulletin board.

We made bird feeders for the birds that do not migrate in the winter and have trouble finding food in the cold weather and snow. We used bagels, honey, and nut-free birdseed.

On Monday, we had a great day of training at our center. We learned a lot of great ways to improve the health of ourselves and of our classrooms. We had opportunities to learn new ways of integrating exercise and movement into our school day. Danielle and I spent time changing our schedule around to accommodate more time for large movement activities. We started these changes this week. With the bitter cold temperatures we had to get creative and use our resources inside. The game we played was called "Feed the Bear." The children had to role a colored cube to determine which color berries to feed the bear. Then they ran to a tunnel which we pretended was a cave. They crawled through and on the other side they fed a pretend bear. It was a great way to practice our colors and to get up and moving!

The game was so popular that we added it into one of our table centers for the children to continue practice with sorting and identifying colors.

We used gummy bears for a fun counting and sorting game. The children had fun using this chart to sort their gummy bears. They counted the number of each color and then colored in the chart. I think they had the most fun eating the bears and picking their favorite flavor!

I wish we had room to leave the bear cave in our classroom longer....playing in a cardboard box can be one of the funnest things!