One Night in Bear Town
Hello kids! Nick Jones here. I'm a children's author from Congleton in Cheshire, and today I'm going to read you my brand new book, which is called One Night in Beartown. It's got lots of bears inside it, including Berisford. So please join me again later, we're going to read the book, and we're going to do lots of bear related activities.
Reading: One Night in Bear Town
Join me as I read my latest book, One Night in Beartown!
Talk to your child about the story. What was your favourite part of the story? Do you have a toy that is very special to you like the bear in the story?
Your Favourite Bear
In the book One Night in Bear Town, you will probably remember that the main character, Sandy Lane, has got a favourite teddy bear that she takes to school every day. Can you remember what his name is? It's Berisford. Now, what I would like you to do in this activity is to create your favourite bear. It could be a teddy bear that's in your bedroom or it could just be from your imagination. It doesn't have to be a real bear. You can either get a grown-up to print out the bear from the website and colour that in, or you can just to do your own bear from scratch. So, get your crayons and pencils out, have some fun and I look forward to seeing the bears that you come up with later.
Talk to your child about the story. What was your favourite part of the story? Do you have a toy that is very special to you like the bear in the story?
Teddy's Bear Picnic
The next activity we are doing is re-enacting a teddy bears picnic. As you’ll remember from the story, Sandy and the bears have a picnic near the end at Congleton Park. In the story they had sandwiches, a slice of cake, Sandy's had a drink and they had a great time.
I would like us to have a great time re-enacting a teddy bear’s picnic. So, what we'll need is something to put all the bears and the food and the drinks on, so you could use a tea towel, a tablecloth, a pillowcase etc. You are also going to need some food, so you can have real food if you want or you could have toy food, I'm going to have a mixture of both. What sort of food would you have? Well, Sandy and the bears have got some cake, and they've also got some sandwiches. So maybe you could get yourself a tablecloth or a tea towel or a pillowcase to rest on. Put all your bears on that. Then get some cups. This activity develops children’s imaginations, language and communication and creative play.
Bear Maths
Our next activity is bear maths. This involves looking at your teddy bears, and figuring out the similarities and differences between them. For example, two of my bears are quite similar. They both have tufty hair, but they're different colours. So that's a similarity and a difference. Two of my other bears have a ribbon around their necks. But one has a nose, and one doesn't. So that's a similarity and a difference.
If you can look at your child’s own teddy bears, and figure out what similarities and differences they have, and then maybe put them into different groups. You can add up the number of bears that you have in each group. So that's bear maths. Enjoy!
This develops children’s understanding of things that are the same and things that are different. It also supports them to count and sort objects into groups.
Extension
Now it's time for our extension activity. Now you're going to do some research for me. So, in One Night and Beartown, you'll remember seeing lots of very friendly, fun, colourful bears. They are the Bearmania bears. So, I would like you to do some research with the help of a grown-up, go online and see what you can find out about Bearmania in Congleton.
Sarah's Shadow by Nick Jones
Join me as I read my award-winning debut picture book, Sarah’s Shadow