This week’s theme in 212 was all about hibernation and animals that sleep during the winter. Our students participated in fun learning activities all week long related to hibernation. We read some adventurous and fun books like “Hibernation Station” and the class favorite “Bear Snores On”. Our students also enjoyed the Scholastic Big World magazine “Hey There Sleepy Bear”. We incorporated the hibernation theme into all of our daily early childhood learning activities.
Throughout the week, we discovered and identified different types of animals that hibernate for the winter season. Students explored the sensory table filled with dried beans searching for pictures and miniature animals that hide and go to sleep in the cold, such as bears, ladybugs, skunks, and of course groundhogs. Once students found an animal in the sensory bin they had to match the picture or manipulative to a pictures board. During this activity, students worked on following simple one and two-step directions, and animal identification, all while exploring the feeling and sounds of the dried beans in the sensory table.
One of our class’s favorite stories about hibernation was “Bear Snores on” by Karma Wilson. The students enjoy the rhyming and repetitive language in this story. While the students listened to the book read aloud during whole group instruction, a voice output switch was used for our students to actively participate in the storytelling. Each student in our class made a hibernation den with a sleeping bear. During this activity students worked on color identification, following one and two-step directions and fine motor skills. All the bears look so cozy sleeping in their den. Another favorite activity was pretending to be a sleeping bear in our therapy tunnel. Students crawled into the tunnel, curled up like the bear in the book, and pretended to sleep. Some of our students wanted to start naptime early during this activity.
This was a fun-filled week of learning how animals like to stay warm and cozy during the cold winter months.
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