VBC for kids – Jez Alborough – My Friend Bear – Learning Emotions

                                                                            

Apart from The Washing Line, Jez Alborough was a new author to us earlier this year, I didn’t realise The Washing Line was written by him until recently.  I started looking out for his books when I saw he was an upcoming author for the virtual book club for kids.  We are all happy to have discovered his stories. 
My Friend Bear is a follow from Where’s my teddy and It’s the bear.  Eddy (boy) is in the woods with Freddy his teddy he is feeling lonely and sad and wishes he had someone to talk to.  He spies a giant teddy which he recognises as belonging to the bear.  The story covers a range of emotions for both Eddy and the bear.  I thought looking at various emotions would work well with the story.
Luath has a dressing bear puzzle that has bear faces with various emotions.  I placed it out one morning and Luath soon started dressing the bears.

Once she had finished dressing she began to line up all the bears tops so I lined up all the faces.

I then picked a bear’s head to trace around onto paper and repeated this eight times.  I asked Luath to selected a face for me to draw and  repeated this until all eight bear faces were filled.  We coloured them into together.  Between us we decided what type of emotion each face represented.

Luath also had paper to draw on.  I think she must have loved the novelty of the big box of pens as she drew and investigated the variety of pens for much longer than she normal spends drawing.
     
Luath decided to match the wooden faces to the picture.

We have used the bear faces a few times to talk about how we feel.  Generally we all are quite aware of each others moods but this was a fun way to review feelings.
(Luath is 30 months)