Authors: Michael Rosen & Helen Oxenbury
This beautifully illustrated book has been a family-favourite for many years. We’re Going On A Bear Hunt tells the wonderful story of one family’s adventure to find a bear. By using repetitive and evocative vocabulary, your child will feel that they are on the adventure themselves!
Here are my top We’re Going On A Bear Hunt activities you can do with your child to help support his/her speech & language development:
- To support your child’s attention and listening skills, act out the key words in the story as you are reading it. By doing this you will also be supporting your child’s understanding of the vocabulary used. If you are looking for some ideas watch author Michael Rosen act out story here:
2. Due to the repetitive nature of the story and the clear sequence of events throughout, it makes it the perfect story to work on your child’s narrative/story telling skills.
Encourage your child to tell you what happened in the story focusing on the following elements:
- who?
- What doing?
- What?
- Where?
If your child struggles to sequence the story use the images attached here to support them:
3. As you are reading the book with your child, encourage them to find ways to make the sound effects as they come up in the story e.g. “splashy river” – encourage your child to splash water in a basin, “howling snowstorm” – encourage your child to blow over the top of an empty bottom.
4. There is repetitive positional language used throughout this story e.g. over, under, through. Cut up the pictures attached above and ask your child to put them over, under or through objects in the room. You can then encourage your child to give you instructions using the pictures and the targeted positional vocabulary.
5. Make a map using the key parts of the story (see Andy Blackshaw’s example below). You can then go on an adventure with your child in your back garden or in the park to find the bear. You can act out some of the elements of the story or you can find objects outside that make out some of the noises from the story.
You should also check out Join the Bear Hunt where you will find more activities and fun worksheets you can do with your child!