Eyes on Early Years Volume 19 | Page 19

Have a Party with your Bear Day 16th November By Ailsa Gordon Everyone loves a party, especially when it’s with your favourite teddy bear. A party is a lovely opportunity for friends and family to get together to have fun and celebrate. On 16th November, you can celebrate ‘Have a party with your bear day’ with the children in your nursery. The children in your class can be involved in the planning and organizing of the day, how little or how much they do will depend on their age and stage of development. Children will love the excitement of a party for their friends and their favourite teddy bears! Here are some ideas of what the children can do with you in preparation for the special day: 1. Design and decorate invitations for their teddy bears – to plan for the event and to ensure the teddy bears can come to the party, the children can make their own invitations to take home and give to their bears. The children can get creative designing and decorating their invitations. 2. Create a menu of delicious treats – Paddington bear loves marmalade sandwiches and Pooh bear loves honey. These could be served with a selection of healthy fruit and vegetable sticks for a favourite teddy bear sweet treat. 3. Make decorations – the classroom and nursery can be decorated with paper chains, paper streamers and lovely teddy bears which the children can create. This will brighten up the nursery and make all visiting teddy bears feel welcome at the party! 4. Choose music to listen to and songs to sing – my favourite teddy bear songs include ‘Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear turn around’ ‘When Goldielocks went to the house of the bears’ and ‘Round and Round the garden like a teddy bear’. 5. Read teddy bear stories – my favourites include ‘Goldielocks and the Three Bears’, ‘We are going on a Bear Hunt’, ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see?’ and ‘Bear Snores on’. These can be read on the days leading up to the party, engaging the children and building up excitement as well as being read at the party.