Session 2, Week 5: We're going on a bear hunt... and we're not scared!!

It's finally time for our bear hunt! We've been preparing for the past month, practicing our bear hunt song to the book "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury. This week, all of the different environments in the book have been brought to life in the studio! We have long wavy grass, a deep cold river...

... thick oozy mud (actually it's "oobleck", made of cornstarch and water) ...

...a big, dark forest... (with lots of wooden items to discover)

... a swirling whirling snowstorm ... (corn starch packing peanuts on the light table, and paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling)

... and a "narrow gloomy" cave ... (well, not really that narrow, or gloomy, ... rather nice really... but with a few bears!)

"AAAAAHHH! Quick, let's go back!"

"Whew! We're safe!" 

Then, the children explored the room freely from station to station. In music class, they made swishy swashy sounds with instruments in the grasslands, played wooden Orff instruments in the forest and metal metallophones and glockenspiels in the snowstorm, and drums in the cave.

In art class, students made cave drawings, some choosing to draw their own map of the bear hunt. We also made "oobleck art" - painting on the surface of the thick cornstarch mixture kept the paint on the surface without mixing in. After the artists had swirled the colors to their liking, we made a mono print of the work with a piece of paper.

Some activities were more sensory in nature, learning about materials by manipulating them. The students discovered that the cornstarch "snow" would dissolve when put into the water! And when regular cornstarch is mixed with water, it makes MORE OOBLECK!! Playing with the strange substance was very calming and meditative for some students.

In art class, we even painted on top of the oobleck! The paint does not mix with the oobleck but sits on top. After adding and swirling paint around to their liking, we took a mono print to mark the occasion. Some really cool effects were produced through this method!

Little engineers really enjoyed building things out of wood items in our forest!

With our youngest adventurers, we had some other provocations that were more age-appropriate. Tummy time was a lot of fun with this large squishy mirror toy! Reading with mommy and daddy is always fun, too!

What a fabulous week and a great session!
​Enjoy more great moments in this slideshow!