Bears, Bears, Bears!

 Joy's attraction to bears continues to drive some of my instruction. On a recent trip to the zoo, we checked out almost a dozen books about bears! It was a great review of fiction and non-fiction, and we found several books at a level Joy can read herself.

One of the non-fiction books had tons of great pictures and information written at a level appropriate for Joy, so I read it to her while she took notes. YES, a five-year-old can take meaningful notes!!!

Her notes looked like the picture above. The big check marks were added later during a visit to the zoo to see the bears. She remembered what information each and every picture represented and took great pleasure in sharing the information with her friend and all the nearby visitors as she watched the bears.

To the right, the highlighted area has berries, fish, and a deer. I drew the fish and deer, at Joy's request. She was frustrated by how little room there was on the paper at that point, and it served no purpose to demand that she figure out a way to depict deer and fish. She insisted that those two foods be on the picture!

To the left, the highlighted section represented a bear's "massive head" (words directly from the book I read to her) and large snout. At the zoo, Joy also informed those around her that the snout was used to find food because bears have "bad eyes."

This picture (right) has the bear's large feet highlighted, and later Joy added long, sharp claws. She said they were used to dig up the ground, pick berries, and kill deer. I suggested that they also caught fish, but Joy wouldn't agree to that, even though it's true. She was very certain that she knew all about bears! She did enjoy looking at the bears' claws at the zoo.

To the left, you'll see a bear highlighted with at least 6 legs. When I asked her how many legs bears have, she seemed to think I was dense. She said, "They have four, but this bear is running fast. I drew it like that to show that bears are fast!" Can't argue with that.

  To the right, you'll see a highlighted bear who has really long back legs and no body. Joy added a body later when she looked at it again. She explained that the bear was standing up really tall, which bears do. She was so excited when she saw the real bear stand up tall at the zoo. She kept saying, "See! See! They DO stand up, Mom! See!?"

The bears at the zoo also gave us a great look at the bottoms of their feet, which greatly intrigued Joy. I was delighted to find her interested in them because the zoo has life-sized bear prints on the floor of the bear exhibit. I pulled out a ruler and Joy proceeded to measure each of the bear prints and record them in her notebook.

As long as bears are so interesting to Joy, I'll keep using them to improve her reading, writing, measuring, science, note-taking, and other skills! When she shifts her interests to something else, we'll go with that, too.