Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear: Exploring Our Surroundings

It's amazing what we can see if we only pay attention to our surroundings.

Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? by Nancy White Carlstrom follows Jesse Bear as he goes through his day, waking up, dressing up, playing outside, eating, and sleeping. It is brimming with learning ideas on every page. We explored patterns, flowers, rhymes, and tried to pick up objects with our toes, just like the rose between Jesse Bear’s toes! As usual, I am only writing about the highlights of our week.

PATTERN RECOGNITION Little T absolutely loves to move so I make sure that we roam about to keep her interest. For Jesse Bear, we had fun looking for different patterns around the house. Notable patterns were the flowers on a trash can, the dogs on Baby Boy’s onesie, polka dots on Little T’s bag, and plaids and stripes on clothes.

PRE-READING, FINE MOTOR SKILLS Little T LOVES rhymes. When I told her that we would be doing rhymes after we read the book, she said she knew what we would do next, and took out our rhyme puzzle game, which I totally forgot we had. This game is wonderful for sounding out words and strengthening her fine motor skills which would help her in writing later on.

Puzzles are great for fine motor skills. 
This one has an added bonus of working on pre-reading skills!

RHYME Little T did not want to cut and glue a lot of things for the B book (of things that start with the letter B) that I downloaded from Homeschool Share. BUT she did make up her own rhymes to go along with the three pictures that she pasted on the book. As dictated by Little T, the poet:

I am the BEAR
Who sits on the CHAIR


We are the BIRDS

We nest in our PURSE


I am the BOY

Who sat on the TOY

EXPLORATION, DISCOVERY, ART Since Jesse Bear's art work is full of flowers, we explored our garden and neighborhood to look at flowers. It's amazing what we can see if only we pay attention to our surroundings! (See picture above for the flowers that we saw!) We then read The Flower Seed and did an Eric Carle-inspired art work, a simplified version of a pre-kindergarten art lesson that I found and seem to have enjoyed more!

Pre-K art that I seem to have enjoyed more!

SCIENCE Of course, planting actual sunflower seeds was part of the experience! I tasked Little T to water her plant every morning while Baby Boy is out getting sunned. Little T tweaked a song she learned from Kindermusik: I can plant a flower seed, just like this, just like this!

One packet of sunflower seed is P50 at Shopwise

THE LEARNING BASKET FOR THE WEEK

Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? by Nancy White Carlstrom
Go Along Book: The Flower Seed by Eric Carle
Bear Dress Up Puzzle
Felt Dress Up Game
Teddy Bear Lotto – a game of describing what’s on your card and finding it in the big picture
Packet of sunflower seeds
Melissa & Doug pattern blocks
Find the Rhyme puzzle game
Teddy bears
What’s a Bear to Wear? – a mix and match dress up book
Song: Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear turn around
Cranium's Puppy Pals Bingo - a board game for pattern recognition

Make magic!

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