Blueberries for Sal

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Little Bear and Sal both go berrying with their mothers, but after sitting down to rest, they each end up following the other one's mother.

We were delighted to share some of our FIAR time this month with another lovely family for a morning of activities and Harry was really excited to have some friends to work with.

Firstly, we used our own tin buckets and blueberries to see what sound they made when dropped in. I dropped in a coin and lolly stick for the children to hear different sounds and for them to guess what the objects were.

We had a look at the atlas and the children marked on a world map where bears live. We thought about why they don't live in Australia and Africa (too hot).

In the book, the bears and the humans are storing food for the winter. We talked about why food needs to be stored for winter - the plants and berries die down and there is too much frost and snow to collect food. We read this book about hibernation.

The children then drew some animals from the book using autumn themed gold crayons - this was Harry's snake (with forked tongue) and bat. They then washed over the drawings with blueberry paint, which I had made by cooking blueberries with water. The crayon repelled the water-based paint and it made a nice effect on the watercolour paper. When these had dried I gave them a selection of letters printed on blueberries to make their names on the picture.

The children knew that the book is set in autumn, as the characters were making preparations for winter. We made these lovely themed stained glass style hangings, which are on the window to catch the light. 

We also did some work on this book on our own. We had a family trip to Wallington, where Harry collected some sticks and moss in the den building area and brought them home to create his own winter home for a toy bear. He soon realised that the sticks would stand up better planted in soil than stood on the grass and he also found some stones to make a wall to keep out the wind, which he stuck together using 'cement' made from wet mud. I think the poor bear ended up buried in the mud to be rescued at a later date!