"We're going on a bear hunt"

There has been considerable interest in the book "We're going on a bear hunt", over a long period of time. Last week Xavier, Max, Travis, Rionagh, Paige and I were involved in retelling the story using different aspects of our natural environment. We did this at least four times as the children requested it over and over again. We went through the long wavy grass, a snowstorm, through mud, the dark forest, (we didn't go through the river) but we made up our own one, we went on a wibbly wobbly stoney path, then through the narrow gloomy cave, it's a BEAR!!!!!.

The children ran they found the anticipation exciting, Rionagh would make facials as if to say "ooohhh" and Xavier, Paige and Travis would run as Max the bear chased us. The third and fourth time we told the story Max was the bear then Travis became Max's little baby brother bear.

This experience enabled children to act out what they know about the story and using recall and their memory. They used their imaginations to add parts to the story and negotiated who would be who and took turns. It was great having such a fantastic natural environment to use to act out this story. This was a very social and fun experience for children of all ages to be involved in. This book provides many different describing words for children, extending on their vocabulary, it's fantastic to see children so passionate about books and literacy and using books in different ways to retell the story.

Tamara