Bear Themed Preschool Activities

My daughter loves bears. LOVES bears. So in honor of Fat Bear Week, I decided to create a fun little preschool unit for her, full of bear-themed preschool activities. Plus- this went great with fall activities we were already doing during our preschool time at home. And a bonus- many of these activities were great for my toddler to join in on- making homeschooling my preschooler while also chasing my toddler around that much easier. And be sure to grab a FREE pdf of the choice board I created for my daughter at the end of this post!

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Anchor Text

Little Bear from Igloo Publishing

I ADORE this series from Autumn Publishing to introduce non-fiction concepts to my daughter, and I frequently use them in our homeschool units. The illustrations are adorable and the rhyming text grabs their attention.

This one follows how a bear grows during a year, from being born in a den, to growing throughout the summer, to finally hibernating again.

Not only is it adorable, but it also ties in great with the other activities on this list- making it a GREAT anchor text to go back to again and again.

It’s available on Amazon here.

Bear Themed Language Activities

B is for Bear Storytelling

“B” is one of the first phonetic sounds I introduced to my daughter. It’s an easy one for them to both hear and repeat. So using this idea that “B is for Bear”- have your child tell a story about bears with as many “b” sounds in it!

If they get stuck, prompt them with questions like “what color is the bear?” (brown) or “what does the bear eat?” (berries). Let them get silly with it.

You could even write it down for them and then have them illustrate it.

And if you want further handwriting practice for your kiddo, check out this free worksheet that I created for my daughter. (Handwriting really isn’t something I stress over at the preschool age, but some kids just really LOVE tracing worksheets. If they love it- great. But if not- there’s a lot more tactile ways to help them learn letters at this age.)

Classic Bear Characters

Children’s literature is SO RICH with iconic bear characters. Snuggle up each day for classics like Corduroy, Paddington, and Berenstain Bears.

With these characters being so famous, it’s also easy to find stuffed animals as these characters- which is a great way to further increase children’s attachment to these books and to grow the positive feelings they associate with reading- key to developing lifelong readers.

Science Activities

Learning About Hibernation

Bears are definitely the most famous of hibernators, but they’re not the only animals that hibernate in the winter. Teach your preschooler the very basics of hibernation (using Little Bear is a great place to start), and then introduce the idea that other animals hibernate as well. If you want a cute printable for this, check out the one I created here.

This activity is also included in my “Forest in the Fall Preschool Unit” if you’d like to check that unit out as well.

Learning About What Bears Eat

While reading Little Bear, ask your preschooler what you notice the bear eating throughout the book. Then give them this (FREE) printable and ask them to circle items that they think are healthy for bears if they were going to plan a picnic for bears.

(This is also a great way to introduce the idea of “leave no trace” and talking about how it’s important that when we’re in a forest, we want to make sure we keep human food away from animals.)

Family Activities/Imaginative Play

“Going on a Bear Hunt”

I gathered up some of my daughter’s favorite stuffed bears, hid them around the house, and then wrote her clues to help find where they were. She loved the challenge of the clues- I loved the fun she had running around and finding all of her bears hiding different places.

If you have a higher tolerance to things being stuck in your head all day than I do, you could absolutely sing the “Going on a Bear Hunt” song while following the clues.

And if you’re looking for more ways to include geography skills in your preschool time, you could also draw a map of where the different bears are hidden and have your child follow the map!

Teddy Bear Tea Party

Once she had found all of her bears, we invited them to a tea party. And oh my goodness- this was the cutest thing. We took the bears on a picnic, complete with our tea set but also play food that she had around that she said was “healthy for bears.” Tying back into our previous activity of “What Do Bears Eat?”- she used the printout as a grocery list for what she should pack for our bear tea party.

We also read our bear-themed stories to our bears while at the tea party.

It was so much fun and definitely a memory I’ll treasure of this sweet, imaginative age.

Visit a Zoo

And if your kiddo wants to see actual bears in action, load them up for a zoo trip.

Sensory/Fine Motor

Creating a Bear Den

After learning about hibernation and maybe even visiting a zoo to observe habitats, have your child create a bear den. It’s a great hands-on, sensory rich preschool activity to help reinforce what they’ve already learned about bears.

Using a shoebox would work great. Ask them to gather materials that they think would keep the bear warm through winter (leaves, dry grass, etc.)

Put the den together, make it cozy, and then grab some bear figurines to add.

(Instead of using a shoebox, my kiddo decided to make a bear den under her slide in our backyard. While cute and fun- you wouldn’t be able tell what it was if I had included a picture!)

Geography Activity

Placing Different Kinds of Bears on a Map

I can’t let a preschool unit go by without finding a way to incorporate some geography practice! For this bear-themed activity, I created geography cards with different types of bears and then the region/continent that they live on. I initially planned to only include four major kinds of bears, but my four-year-old informed me that only four bears was “too easy” and that she wanted “ALL the challenges.”

So after she matched the first four bears to their regions in under 15 seconds, I gave her the harder set to match (and yes- I had to look up these answers while making the activity because who knows where sloth bears live?)

In this printable you’ll find both sets though- the easier and the more challenging along with an answer key.

Another option would be to grab bear figurines and have them place the the bear figurines on a large world map.

We ended up doing a variation of both and this gave my daughter extra practice with matching continent shapes and placing the continents in the correct location on a map.

(And if you have toddlers running around and you want to include them, have them match the bear card to a bear figurine. They’ll love it.)

Arts and Crafts

Bear Paper Plate

I’m not a huge crafty person, but by daughters are, but this seemed low-key I was excited to give this one a go. Easy enough for me- cute enough for them. It’s a win win.

Grab a paper plate and have them paint or color it brown. Then cut out circles for the eyes, nose, and ears (this can be great cutting practice for your preschooler), and let them glue on the little face.

Done- cute- relatively mess free.

But if you’re more adventurous than I am- check out how to create a bear paper plate using a puffy paint technique here!

Math Activity

There’s a only a few things I really remember from elementary school, but one of those things were getting to play with counting bears. I LOVED them. So naturally, I was so excited to use this bear-themed preschool unit as an excuse to finally buy a set for my girls.

Now I’ll admit- creative math activities don’t come to me as easily as language and social studies activities do. So for this one- I turned to Etsy. I downloaded a set of counting bear activity sheets from Etsy (I bought these), laminated them, and then presented my daughter with just the first few activities.

I’m excited though that counting bears are something that we can use again and again as her skills grow from preschool into the primary years (I love learning materials that are adaptable). PLUS, where counting bears are so popular, there’s A TON of resources to grab online to use with them.

(And was I excited to get to play with them as well and relive my glory days from kindergarten a bit? You bet.)

You can find a set of counting bears on Amazon here.

Additional Books

National Geographic: All About Bears

I always like to include real life photos when I can in our preschool units, so I also grabbed this National Geographic book about bears to include. It’s great for simple facts, real images, and reinforcing geography concepts. It also includes bears like the sun bear, making it a great companion to the geography activity in this unit. It’s available here on Amazon.

The Bear Books by Karma Wilson

WE LOVE THESE BOOKS. The illustrations, the rhyming, the incredible vocabulary- these are books that are meant to be read out loud. You can’t go wrong with any of them.

Check out the collection here on Amazon.

Closing Thoughts

I hope you find these bear-themed preschool activities as cute and as fun as I did while creating them! And if you’d like a bear choice board to go along with this, you can download that here: