📣5′ Activity 1 We review animals we already know (bear, hare, mole, bird), and I introduce new vocabulary (sleep, snore, raven, gopher). [Personally, I adapt the text and the animals so in half my classes I read a simplified version of the story with the following animals (bear, mouse, hare, badger, big black bird, small brown bird, squirrel and mole) ].
🧠 7′ Activity 2 I use laminated cards and play memory games. I have 5 animals in front of them, I hide one, and learners guess which animal is missing.
📖10′ Activity 3 Pre-reading activity: We look at the cover, I explain the title and try to guess what will happen. We discuss hibernation, and I ask learners to share with us in their mother tongue what they know about hibernation. Reading: I read a simplified version of the story Bear Snores On by Karmen Wilson and Jane Chapman (It can also be found on YouTube). Postreading activity: After we read it, we discuss how we would feel if we had a party at home and we fell asleep. We try to see why bear reacted like that when it woke up.
🎭 7′ Activity 4 Dramatisation: I divide learners into two groups, I give them prompts and each learner a role, and they play the story as they are trying to recall it.
🖍8′-10’Activity 5 Drawing: Learners draw whatever they liked most from the story.
“Ms Sofia, I want to draw a bear but I can’t…” It’s an expression I sometimes hear at kindergarten and I keep thinking how sad it is to hear a child full of life and energy believing that they can’t draw. I have noticed that some 5years old seem more relaxed when they are given a worksheet. However while researching it, I found that it is much more important to allow them to express themselves on a white sheet of paper instead of teaching them to just paint between the lines. I encourage them to paint whatever they have in their minds, I even shared paintings of famous artists to make my point that each one of us has an artist inside and our own unique style of painting.
⚗️ 5′ Activity 6 Osmosis Experiment (They don’t need to know the name just to enjoy the magic of science) We put on gummy bears on two bottles; one with water and one with vinegar. They guessed what would happen, and we let them rest for a day. The next day, we observed how the gummy bears expanded and explained that due to gelatin, the gummy bears absorbed water. The gelatin is a semi-permeable material that allows water to be absorbed while preventing the gummy bears from dissolving in water. Another observation is that the gummy bears always grow the most in vinegar.