The Bears Are Still Awake - Hibernation Craft

After reading Jim Arnosky's story about a bear, that arrives late every fall to find a place to hibernate in the woods behind Arnosky's farm, it seemed like a good time to work on a hibernation craft.

First though, we looked up a little about the bears in our area. Where we live there are mainly black bears, though we're not far from grizzly territory either. Bears are often not considered true hibernators, because their body temperature does not drop as low as other hibernating animals, and because they can reawaken easily to defend themselves if need be. Some scientists actually refer to them as "super hibernators" (we may have to look more into that for Science Sunday).

At any rate, with as mild a fall as we've been having, we have to imagine our local bears are still awake.

With that in mind, we prepared to do our craft. I gave the girls each:

• a sheet of blue construction paper


• half of a paper plate with a half circle cut out of the bottom


• a half circle of black construction paper, slightly smaller than the plate.


• fall colored markers and crayons


• glue


• and one set of google eyes.

I had them glue the black half circles in the middle, at the bottom edge, of their blue sheets of paper.


Then, they drew fall scenes around them...


...and colored the back sides of the plates to look like caves...


...before gluing them over the black paper.


Finally, they added a couple of drops of glue onto the black sheets...


...to hold the google eyes.


Our bears have found their dens, but they're not quite ready for bed.



It's great to be a homeschooler.

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