Hey friends! I’m back with a fun printable activity to extend the play with the folk song of the week, Teddy Bear. (If you haven’t downloaded the free song card, click here!)
With young kids, one of the best things we can do to encourage musical growth is to create meaningful repetitions for singing and exploring their growing voices. I love figuring out a little toy or activity they can manipulate themselves that will naturally motivate them to sing the song over and over, and to do it with JOY! And I definitely think this little teddy bear is joyful!
I made the original size BIG–11x17. You can print it at your local print shop for around $2. If you’d prefer printing it at home, you can print it at half size to get it onto a regular 8.5x11 sized paper (or just click “scale to fit”). There is an option for printing in color or in black and white. Once printing onto sturdy paper, cut and laminate if desired. Then align the corresponding black dots and punch a brad through to create joints for the teddy bear to move his/her arms and legs.
(Older children may enjoy creating clothes or accessories for the teddy! I may even draw some up to share, and I’ll update this post if I do, but I wanted to make sure to get the teddy up today!)
As the child sings, they can then play with their teddy to do the actions in the song. If you’re in a classroom setting, you can even send the teddy bear home to have the child play with their families! That’s one of the reasons I love paper materials–they are cheap to create and replace, should something happen to them. They’re also a lot easier to store, haha! I usually store my materials in a page protector with the song card, in a binder with alphatabs.
Anyway, enjoy! And let me know if you give this a try, I seriously love hearing from you. Always makes my day:)
Click here to print in COLOR Click here to print in BLACK AND WHITE
Happy Singing! -Lauren