Brown Bear, Brown Bear: Fun With Colors {Virtual Book Club}

When I first saw this I knew I wanted to follow it...

Then I saw that others could participate too and I knew I wanted to join in on the Blog Hopping fun!

This month's featured author is Bill Martin Jr. and we have several Bill Martin Jr. books here in our home. So far our favorites are "Brown Bear, Brown Bear", "Panda Bear, Panda Bear" and "Baby Bear, Baby Bear". Nikolai can pretty much recite "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" if given the color. I discovered that when shopping at Joann's for my long awaiting DIY Color-Sorting Mat  project. I say long awaited because Nikolai wanted me to finish it and I wanted to finish it! It goes right along with him wanting to find matches for everything and asking "what's this favorite color?"

So this is what I have to share with you for this month's featured author!

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?

Color Sorting, Matching and a DIY Board Game

Color Sorting and Matching

Using the color sorting mat (either make your own or use squares of construction paper, I am all about doing what you can with what you already have) sort out objects like buttons, felt, beads, etc into the colors talking about the name of the color. Nikolai loves doing this and can last about 15 to 20 minutes just sorting out these objects! Yay!

We then incorporated a spinner that I had made previously (using cardboard, the printout I made, glue, a brad and washer) and pointed to the matching color (and placed anymore unsorted objects onto that color) to the animal from Brown Bear, Brown Bear. It was great fun spinning the spinner and pointing to the matching color, naming the color and the animal, and had to throw in animal sounds too! 

We (of course) had to move this mat to the floor. Nikolai was tired of sitting at the table and since Samara was sleeping (not like she is mobile yet) I figured "why not? It's more comfortable on the floor anyway.'" Nikolai went around looking for toys that matched the colors, "look mommy! they match!" He was so excited to find matches.

DIY Board Game

One of the things I wanted to go with the spinner was a game. I have been waiting to be able to teach little man to play a board game and, though he is not quite ready yet, this was a perfect opportunity to get him started! The link has what I used in PDF format along with my thoughts on different ways to play...

What do You See?

We are still working on this part of what I have to share with you. We have fun each time we play this game and it changes every time! That is one of the things that I love about stuff like this, they are so versatile!

We talked about colors as we I colored the squares, though he picked out the colors. He helped color the manila folder too. When we played, we mostly just matched the animals to either the drawn card or the spinner.

Check out these other sites contributing to the Book Club, and if you have anything you want to share too, feel free to contribute!

There are a few rules for this blog hop that we ask you to follow, so make sure to read them: 

1. Link up only posts inspired by Bill Martin Jr. that share children's book inspired crafts, activities, recipes, etc. Any other posts will be deleted.
2. Visit other blog posts on the linky and comment on or share the ones you love!

see you next time,