Wednesday, May 18, 2016

We Went On A Bear Hunt


If you have kids, chances are you've read the classic We're Going On A Bear Hunt one or two million times. It's one of our favorite books around here and we've been reading it A LOT. Anything to do with animals seems to be at the top of "the cool list." My minis and I have gone on many "bear hikes," which mainly consists of us looking for bears and claiming that old tree trunks are the bears. It's nearly impossible for me to get daycare on a hike (too many littles and not enough of me), so we brought the bear hunt to our backyard.

I told Hubs to keep the grass in the backyard long, like really long. I was worried about losing one of the crawling babies in the grass (kind of kidding, kind of not). The "swishy swashy" grass made for the perfect atmosphere for the hunt.

I hid stuffed bears and bear figurines all around the backyard. Then the kids got out their trusty binoculars (two empty toilet paper rolls held together with masking tape. We later painted them to give them "beautiful decorations") and went "hunting." Once they found all of the bears hiding in the yard, they hunted them again, again and again. Nearly a dozen times (taking up most of our morning).



Can you spot the bears in the backyard??


















The kids were soooo proud whenever they found a bear.





The more times I had to hide the bears, the more creative and silly the hiding places got. The bears drove the Cozy Coupes, pushed the play mowers, went for a wagon ride, and even slid down the slide. The kids thought those hiding places were hilarious!



Other activities for the day:

We the book several times. The first time we ate them with blueberries because "bears love to eat berries." We also read Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? because, well, bears. 



The kids made bear masks and then pretended to be bears.



We watched a few minutes of a documentary about bears. The kids noticed how the bears caught fish from a stream and decided to pretend to catch fish like a bear. They also pretended their chicken nuggets for lunch was fish.

This is definitely a great activity/theme day for all ages of kids (babies to at least 8 years old). I say that because my two oldest (nearly 6 and 8) were incredibly disappointed they missed out on the bear hunt and have requested to do it this summer when all of the school age kids are back. When we do this a second time, I will be adding in fish sticks for lunch and maybe incorporating a page or two from the book into the bear hunt (example: the river=a little pool to walk through, wind=a fan blowing on them).

All in all, a great and interactive theme day!