Teddy Bear Picnic & Math and literacy centers

Last week was our Teddy Bear unit. Always such a fun unit! We bring our Teddy Bears to school on Thursday for our "bear share". The bears spend the night at school and we have our Teddy Bear picnic on Friday.
This year I decided to make some teddy bear picnic baskets out of some soda boxes that I acquired. I think they turned out soooo stinkin' cute!!!!

Inside of each basket I put a picnic napkin (that I bought at dollar tree) and a bag of honey combs and goldfish (Because fish and honey are a bear's favorite food, of course.;)

We also wore our disguises to the picnic...because only bears are allowed at the teddy bear picnic!

We always have our picnic in the cafeteria in the afternoon:) That way-we never have to worry about what the weather will be like. We also watch the movie of the Teddy Bear's Picnic.
While our bears were at school, we also worked on Julie Lee's "bear exploration" sheet. This is SUPER cute and a FREEBIE on her blog...so, go grab it and leave her a nice comment:)!!!!

 I created a new pack of math and literacy centers for this unit! I was VERY pleased with how my centers went this week!! If you have a HUGE range of abilities in your class, like I do-you will want to check it out! This pack comes with everything you need to EASILY differentiat the centers to try to meet the needs of every student. Click on the pic below to check it out on TPT! (You can also scroll down further to view pics of the centers in action in my classroom:)

Literacy Centers:
In this center, the students had to look at the capital letter on the bear and trace the lowercase letter and color the bear that color on the response sheet.  This center can be differentiated by using the lift-the-flap noses. (There is also a more simple response sheet included in the packet with only 1/2 of the letters on it.)

 

Here is a color word center. Students match the color word to the correct color bear. Notice that on the "approaching level" version, the color words match the color of the bear and the words are traceable on the response sheet. With the on-level version the color words are all printed in black and the response sheet is blank.

This next one is a rhyming center. The students match the beehive card to the correct rhyming bear. You can glue the matching color dots on the back of the beehive cards for self-check (may choose only to do this for the approaching level students.

This is a beginning sounds center. Students will spin the 2 spinners to see what letter to trace and what color to trace it with. The approaching level has pictures at the bottom of the graph, while the above level has letters at the bottom.

Math Centers:

This is a patterning center. Notice that the approaching level bears have letters on them to help them build a label the correct pattern. The on/above level doesn't have any letters.

In this center, students count the number of objects on the card and match it to the correct number on the work mat. The approaching level has traceable numbers on the response sheet, while the on level has a blank response sheet.

For this center, students count the number of bees around the honey pot. They can write or trace (depending on their ability) the number in the box and color the honey pot to match.

The last center is a gummy bear graph. Students sort their bears and graph how many they had of each color.