Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

It is said that there is always a first time for everything. Mine has come when it comes to the first post on my new blog. I must admit that it turned out to be quite a challenge! Eventually, I managed, and here it is. I'd been long thinking about the name of the blog. I looked far but it turned out that the idea was very close :) Mambiatka is my nickname which invented my uncle when I was in high school.

Ok but what do I need this blog for? The idea was to create my teaching portfolio and add it to my CV. I do not have much experience as a teacher, but I have many interesting ideas and great knowledge. Eventually, I decided I would share these ideas with others.

Ok, it's time to get to work! Today I will write you about a book called Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle.

This book stole hearts of both children and adults. Everyone who worked with books by Eric Carle knows how charming they are. For those who have not heard about them - I strongly encourage you to read them!

Last month, I used it during lessons with children from the first grade (6 and 7 year olds) and the effect was smashing! The kids loved the story and pictures. They had a lot of fun, and what is the most important, they memorized all the words!

There are very simple dialogues in the book - the structure is the same, not changing. However, children learn a lot.

The list of words:

Animals:

bear, bird, duck, horse, frog, cat, dog, sheep, fish

Colors:

brown, red, yellow, blue, green, purple, white, black, gold (orange)

We read the book during one of the 5 senses lessons (in this case the sense of sight) so the children could say I see.... Pets and colors were practiced earlier.

After the warm up, we talked about the verb to see, and we learned the question What do you see? Then I went to reading. Kids caught the rhythm very quickly so after a while we were reading together! If you do not have the book you can download it HERE. You can use it on your tablet or laptop. I was forced to do so on my first lesson with this book and it worked out great! :)

After reading the book, each child was given a picture of a pet and their task was to put them in the same order as it was in the book. My flashcards available here.

Then the students worked in small groups. Each of them received an envelope with puzzles. Their task was to put the head of animals with their tails. Envelope and pictures available in this set, which comes from the 1plus1plus1equals1 website.

Another task which was extremely attractive for my students was the spy bottle. I printed flashcards in a very small size, laminated and put into a small bottle filled with rice and water. You can try the same only with rice. The students were given a set of cut out pictures (as in the pictures below, you can print them from this set, also from the 1plus1plus1equals1 website). Each child in turn sought in a bottle one image. When found, the word was said aloud, for example, GREEN FROG! Then everyone was looking for frogs in their set and glued into a notebook. Then they wrote the name and colored the pictures. I highly recommend this exercise. Fun guaranteed!