Easy Going on a Bear Hunt Activities for Preschool Children
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury is a classic children’s book that we love to read in preschool. There’s so many fun bear hunt activities that you can do with this book. Here’s some of our favorite activities including the easiest bear crafts we like to do with young kids.
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt Creative Activities
From acting out the book to making fun crafts or even having bear snacks, try all these great bear hunt activities with your kids! Little learners love the story, and there’s tons of great options to choose from to go along with the book!
Read the Book!
Before starting any of these fun activities, the first thing you need to do is read the book! The read is the foundation of all these activities, so you may want to read it a few times through. Then, ask your child to recap with you what happens on the bear hunt.
After the book, you can also listen to the song or watch the video based on the book. We like to watch this one, but there’s a bunch out there. Hearing it also helps young children internalize the story for the later activities.
Gross Motor Activities for the Bear Hunt
At least once while reading the book or listening to the song have your child get up and pretend they’re on a bear hunt! Not only is dramatic play very beneficial for little kids, but this also helps with gross motor skills as they pretend to stomp, climb, and run on their own bear hunts.
If it helps, grab a few little props to help with their pretend play. We like to break out a pair of binoculars to help spot bears. If you don’t have your own binoculars, you can easily make them with two empty cardboard tubes. And if you want to make the bear hunt more real, hide a stuffed animal bear around the room.
Bear Hunt Map Craft
A great way to make an easy craft out of this book is by making your own bear hunt map! Children can cut out and draw their maps with all the different places mentioned in the story.
Materials Needed
Here’s everything we used for this simple craft. We found most everything at the local dollar store, or you can find it at a craft store.
- Brown, gray (or black), blue, and green construction paper
- Markers
- Cotton Ball
- Glue Sticks
- Picture of a bear
Making Your Map
First, you’ll need to cut out all your pieces from your construction paper. Your child can easily help with this part as a great way to work on fine motor skills. Check out all our tips for using scissors with small children here.
You’ll need to cut out:
- One green square with cuts halfway through for tall grass
- One blue river
- A few green triangles for trees in the forest
- A gray or black cave with a door opening for a bear
Now here’s the order for your map that goes along with the different scenes in the book:
- Long Wavy Grass
- Cold River
- Thick Oozy Mud
- Big Dark Forest
- Snow Storm
- Bear Cave
First, have your child glue on the construction paper for their grass and their river. Next, draw on some thick mud with markers (or paint). Then, glue on the green trees that are the forest.
Next, add the cotton balls for the snow storm. Lastly, add your cave that opens to a picture of a bear. Once everything is dry, you can take your map with you to go on your pretend bear hunt!
Paper Bag Bear Puppet
Another fun craft we like to do with this classic book is this cute bear puppet! There’s tons of different ways you can make bear crafts or even this bear craft, but we really like to paint with different utensils like forks.
Painting with something other than a paintbrush is a great way to work on fine motor skills and creativity. It also incorporates a great form of sensory play- messy play! Not to mention, little hands have so much fun with it.
Materials Needed
Again, we got all our craft supplies for this from the dollar store. You can also use whatever you have on hand that fits with the craft.
- Brown Paper Bags
- Brown Paint
- Black, brown, and white construction paper
- Glue
- Optional: Googly eyes
Making Your Bear
First, your child will paint the paper bag with the brown paint with the bottom folded part of the bag facing up. The benefits of this come from letting your child paint however they want on the bag, so don’t force them to paint a certain way or fill up the whole bag with paint. It’s not important what it looks like at the end or if it looks like ours.
While the paint dries, lift the bottom flap so the paint doesn’t dry it shut.
Once the paint is dry, add the bears face and ears to the bottom folded part of the bag. Here you can use googly eyes, construction paper, or any combination of them. Let your child help with the cutting and glueing as well.
Then, when you’re doing your acting out bear hunt activity, you can use your homemade bear puppet at the end.
Have a Fun Bear Hunt!
Now, you can use all your crafts to make your bear hunt more real! This is a great story to spend some time on or create a whole lesson plan around if you’re in a preschool classroom, and there’s no shortage of great activities to go along with it!
Bonus: Cute Snack
What better way to continue the fun bear activities than with a bear themed snack! We found this super bear s’more snacks to go along with the story that you can find here. Or grab some Teddy Grahams for an easy bear snack.
Try Another Fun Book Activity
If you love doing activities and crafts based on great children’s books either with your kids or in your classroom, try another one of our favorites. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is another early childhood classic that we have lots of fun activities for here!
