Learning with Pinterest-Hibernation

My kids love to do crafts and art projects but I am always at a loss as to what to make.  Luckily there is this wonderful, addictive site called Pinterest that always has the answer. If you combine Pinterest with library books and random art supplies, you have a really cheap way to teach a ton of subjects!  So I decided to post some of the ways that we use Pinterest in our school day that might hopefully inspire you to get creative with your own kids.

This past week, I decided to focus on mammals and hibernation in science, since we have been having such a cold winter lately.  My local library happened to have almost every book I was searching for that day, so we had lots of cute books to choose from.

Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner:  This was a really cute book that shows the many different ways that animals survive the winter, above and below the ground.  Really beautiful pictures.

Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman:  We actually own this book and it really is a great rhyming series to have in your collection. This story is about a hibernating bear that is awoken by his friends in the winter when they decide to have an impromptu party.

Ridiculous! by Michael Coleman:   I found this book in the non-fiction area of our library.  This was a cute story about a little tortoise who decides that she does not want to hibernate anymore and sets out to find what she has been missing each winter.

Sleep Big Bear, Sleep! by Maureen Wright:   This book was Ben’s favorite story this week.  It is about a bear that is hard of hearing and when Old Man Winter tells him to go to sleep he thinks he is telling him to do other things, like sweep, leap, etc.  There were a lot of giggles while we were reading this book…

After I found all of these cute books at the library, I clicked over to Pinterest and found lots of cute bear activities.  This is the one that I picked out to do this week (except we made a brown bear!)

Then after all of the fun stuff, we learned about what makes a mammal so special and wrote a few sentences about what we had learned this week.

 

 

After we read our books, did our craft, and wrote our sentences about the lesson, I asked Ben some comprehension-type questions that he really did well on.

1. Name some characteristics of mammals.
2. How many mammals do we have in our house? (We have 4 humans, 1 guinea pig, and 1 cute dog…he named everything but the humans. His mind was blown when I told him that we were mammals too.)
3. Why do animals hibernate?
4. Name two animals that hibernate. (He chose brown bears and bullfrogs)

So overall I think this lesson was a success.  We had fun and my child actually remembered most of the facts from the lesson, which is all I ask of him most days:)