Bears, bears, bears!

I've always meant to keep a written record of the things we do at home to go along with their weekly pre-school theme, but as of yet I haven't done one post about it! So, one New Year hope is that I will be diligent to do one post a week about our learning basket theme. We'll see how it all pans out:)

This week is bears! Miss Erin, their wonderful teacher, gives us a detailed lesson plan she will be using at the beginning of each week. It is a wonderful way to know what they are reading, singing, playing, etc. when they are at pre-school to provide extensions at home. Sometimes I don't, but most of the time I at least go through our book stash and find some books to go with the theme.

When I read today that the theme was bears, I was excited! I knew we had several books on bears, some beloved (like "Going on a Bear Hunt" , "Jesse Bear, What will you wear?", and "Winnie the Pooh") and some non-fiction and even a poetry book. I get excited about these things:)

I pulled our bears out of the animal basket and we sat down and started in on the books this evening. They played with their bears in the bath tonight. After all, tonight we read all bears can swim.

Ahhhh, give me a theme and you make my teacher's heart and mama's heart and just my heart in general, happy. It brings me a small sense of control in this wild world-ha.

So, there ya go. We'll read our bear books this week and on into next I'm sure. We'll play "bears" and make dens to hibernate in, we'll sort our color bears, and maybe make something with honey in the kitchen:) I have a Jesse Bear print out that I've been meaning to laminate, like a paper doll that they put weather appropriate clothes on. Maybe I'll finally get that project done. Probably not. Never say never, though.

Okay, that's all for tonight. I'll try to keep these posts short so that I don't intimidate myself into thinking they need to be elaborate:)

Jen