Bear Cave Alphabet Game

This week’s Virtual Book Club for Kids is featuring Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson. We’re sharing a paper bag bear cave craft and bear cave alphabet game. Help bear search for letters in the snow. Be sure to check out all of the bear themed activities at the end. I get commissions for purchases made through the affiliate links in this post.

Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson

Bear Snores On is the first title in Karma Wilson’s series of Bear books. It has been one of my family’s favorites since my oldest son was a baby. It was one of the first longer books that he would sit through. The rhythmic rhyming text is captivating and the illustrations are playful. When Aiden was a toddler, he liked to finish the lines of the book. Every couple of pages ends with “but the bear snores on.” This is one of those books that you can read again and again and not tire of it. Read it with feeling and enthusiasm and your kids will love it even more.

One of my daughter’s favorite animals is a polar bear. She equally loves brown bears and grizzly bears. I knew using her love of bears would be a great way to help her practice letters. Bear Snores On was the perfect inspiration. First we had to make caves for the bears.

Easy Bear Cave Craft

Supplies You’ll Need:

paper bags
scissors
white paint (we used washable tempera paint)
cotton balls
glitter (CraftProjectIdeas.com keeps us well stocked in a variety of glitter colors)
tape

Cut an opening on one side of the paper bag to represent the cave opening. Fold the top of the paper bag over. Use a cotton ball to paint snow on the paper bag. Add white glitter to make the snow shimmery. (My kids also chose to add other colors of glitter.) Let the paint dry.

Open the paper up and tape the top down to form the cave.

Add a bear to your cave.

We used several different kinds of bears – a Little People bear, Safari Ltd. bears, LEGO bears, etc. If you made bigger caves, you could also use stuffed bears.

Search for Letters in the Snow

For the alphabet game, we added snow (which was just some poly-fil – you could also use cotton balls) in front of the caves.

Hide letters under the snow. We used Bananagram letter tiles. (These letter tiles are small, so supervision is required. For children who are likely to place the tiles in their mouth, choose larger letters.)

How to Play the Bear Cave Alphabet Game:

Have your child take a bear to a letter tile. Have her turn the tile over and say the name of the letter. Help the bear take the letter back to its cave. Continue finding tiles under the snow and naming the letters. You could also work on letter sounds or challenge your child to think of a word that begins with each letter.

Bear Cave Pretend Play

In addition to the bear cave alphabet game, Lily (age 3.5) and Elon (21 months) had a lot of fun just playing with the bears, snow, and caves. They walked the bears around, created different scenes, and told stories. They added a few more arctic animals to the snow as well.

Aiden (age 8) painted his bear cave and then added lights to his. They were a string of battery powered LED lights I found at the dollar store.

How will you play with the bear caves?

More Bear Activities from Inspiration Laboratories

Bear Paw Alphabet Tracks – download the bear paw prints with uppercase letters and numbers 1-10. Make a trail of paw prints to create an alphabet track around the room.

Brown Bear Beginning Letter Sounds Game – Use animals from Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? to focus on select letters and reinforce their names and sounds.

The Three Bears Porridge Experiment & Size Sorting – Have you ever thought about the temperatures of the porridge in the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears? Set up an experiment to see what really should happen. Which size will be the coldest?

More Activities from the Virtual Book Club for Kids

See more bear themed activities inspired by Bear Snores On:

Teddy Bear Ordering and Sorting – Rainy Day Mum
Printable Bear Counting Activity – The Educators’ Spin On It
Bear Snores On Snack Time – My Storytime Corner
Bear Dreamed About Colors Printable Book to Color- JDaniel4’s Mom
Bear Themed Play Dough Mats – Preschool Powol Packets
Hibernating Bear Craft – Still Playing School
Building Shapes and More Bear Themed Learning – Mama Smiles

Also stop by the Virtual Book Club for Kids Facebook group to see what others are sharing!

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