It is now December and I think it should snow. I generally am not in favor of snow but it is nice at Christmastime. Since we were talking about Polar Bears today I was hoping that it would look more arctic outside, but alas the plants in the flower bed next to my front door are still green and looking pretty perky for the first week in December.
We read Bedtime for Little Bears! by David Bedford, Baby Polar by Yannick Murphy, Polar Bear Night by Lauren Thompson, My Little Polar Bear by Claudia Rueda and The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett. I was surprised when I asked the children if they knew the traditional story The Three Bears. A lot of them said that they didn't know that story. One girl even told me that I was silly because it's The Three Little Pigs! So instead of explaining to them that Jan Brett's story is based on this traditional tale, I just read it. "Really? They don't know that story?" I thought. How can that be? These are children from families that obviously value reading and early child development. I want to say to parents "Hey get with it! Your child is lacking in some very basic areas of common knowledge!" But I digress.
We played the song Bears have Coats of Many Colors from the CD Bear Tunes by Brent Holmes. We talked about why different bears would be different colors. Briefly talking about camouflage and even the fact that a polar bear will hide his nose with his paw when he is hunting. I handed out some snowflakes cut from coffee filters and we used them to dance and create a snow storm. Since I had no real snow to use, I created paper snowballs and we had a pretend snowball fight. Finally, we created a polar bear face using a paper plate and some puffy shaving cream/Elmer's glue paint. We added a black nose, some cotton pad ears and a couple of google eyes. They turned out very cute but the "paint" takes a very long time to dry. I hope that no one dropped their polar bear in mom's back seat on the way home.
Michele Schumann
Children's Librarian
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