Unit Seven A fall unit study Ages 4–7
Bears
$5.99 · One-time purchase
Find your own pulse, discover how a black bear’s body changes through winter, search for sheltered places outdoors, and build a model den before sharing warm honey-oat porridge.
Page two
The four books
Read aloud, more than once, in no particular order. Each one is annotated — why it is here and what to watch for. If one of the four is out at the library, four is not the point.
- Bear Snores On — Karma Wilson
- A Bear’s Year — Kathy Duval
- Every Autumn Comes the Bear — Jim Arnosky
- Sleep, Big Bear, Sleep! — Maureen Wright
The books are not included and they are not for sale here. They are library books, which is the point.
Page four
The science lesson
American black bears spend winter in dens. Their metabolism and heart rate slow greatly while they live on stored body fat, yet they can wake more readily than small true hibernators.
It opens with what the parent needs to know, written for someone who has not thought about it since school. Then a demonstration to do at the table, and one question afterward.
“What would you do if there were no food all winter?”
Ask it once. Then be quiet and let the answer come, however long it takes.
And then the rest of it.
- The poems
- “Winter-Time” — Robert Louis Stevenson, said aloud once a day until it is theirs by Friday. Then “Winter” — William Shakespeare, read once on the last day and deliberately not explained.
- The activity
- Find three sheltered outdoor places and compare wind, dampness, warmth, and cover without reaching into holes or disturbing wildlife.
- The craft
- Build a model den in a shoebox with paper rock walls and a thick lining of dry leaves or grass, then test whether it stays dark and blocks moving air.
- Math
- Counting, number bonds to ten, tally marks, which pile has more, and word problems to read aloud — all of it about bears.
- The copywork page
- “The bear rests all winter.” on three-line ruling — two lines traced, the rest left blank.
- A devotion, five days
- 5 days, two minutes each at the table — a verse, a sentence, and one line to pray together. Use your family’s preferred translation. Genesis 8:22 · Psalm 121:4 · Mark 4:38 · Psalm 4:8 · Matthew 11:28.
- Honey-oat porridge
- A warm fifteen-minute breakfast, with an age-safe sweetener for children under twelve months. The child’s job and the adult’s job are written out separately, so nobody has to guess who holds the knife.
- What you will need
- Four books from the library, a timer, a safe outdoor walk, a shoebox, dry leaves or grass, oats, and a printer.
Take the bears unit.
One purchase for the whole unit as a print-ready PDF. No account and no login — it arrives by email, and it is yours to print as often as you like for the children in your own house.
Here it is.
All five days of Apples, yours to print. A copy is on its way to your inbox as well — check the spam folder if it isn’t there in a few minutes.
Start with Monday: cut an apple across the middle instead of down through the stem, and look for the star.