Ideas for the Classroom: Bear Hunt

This short two-day Thanksgiving week was going to be great.  I just knew it.  I was in a good mood.  My students were in a good mood.  What could go wrong? 

Well, pretty quickly Monday morning I realized that many of my students hit Thanksgiving overload.  They had done so many fun Thanksgiving activities in class, that coming down for reading intervention to find yet another thanksgiving activity left them less than enthused.

Glancing around the room for an idea as my disappointed second graders sat in front of me, I pieced together this game that I am calling “Bear Hunt.”   I used it all this week (all two days!) and my students love it.  Here it is:

Materials:

• Small Bears (or any other small ‘game piece’ type object)
• Flashcards of words your students are learning
• Tape
• Whiteboard and markers

Set-Up:

1. Tape the flashcards to the bottom of the small bears

2nd Grade

1st Grade

Kindergarten

 2. Place/Hide bears around the room
 

3. Make sections on the white board so each student has their own individual space

Directions:

• Students each find one bear
• Individually they bring the bear to the teacher and read the word on the bottom of the bear.  If they read it incorrectly, then they put the bear back and find another one.
• After a student reads the word correctly, he goes up to his designated spot on the board, writes the word, and leaves the bear on the whiteboard tray under his section
• Repeat the steps until all bears are found

*Math Connection: Have students also tally and/or count how many bears they found at the end of the hunt

Completed Bear Hunts:

2nd Grade (You can see the math for total words written and total letters written)

1st Grade

Those are the basic directions.  I used this game with all my K-2 intervention students.  Kindergarten hunted for letters on their bears, and we worked on letter identification and letter sounds.  1^st grade hunted for easily decodable CVC words.  We also circled the vowel in each word after the hunt and reviewed vowel sounds. And 2^nd grade hunted for some of their sight words. 

I found this “Bear Hunt” to be a great way to get kids moving and motivated.  They were really excited to read and write their words so they could find their next bear.

Trying to change your lesson plan one minute into your lesson can often create a mess (and usually isn’t a great idea), but this time quick thinking paid off.  Thankfully my students and I both love “Bear Hunt.”  I took this experience as a reminder that opportunity often lies hidden in the form of a challenge. 

What am I thankful for this holiday?  My students... and their brutal honesty!