Bearly Alike

Bearly Alike DVD These activity ideas are designed to accompany the short film Bearly Alike. They are taken directly from the teachers resource packet available on the special features of the DVD. They are meant to be used as "jumping off" points and resources to adapt to your own needs. Enjoy!

SCIENCE:

People and animals eat food for energy. Have students create restaurant or cafeteria menus for different animals. For example, if a bear were going to eat at the school cafeteria, what food choices would you give him? You could have berries, short grass, long grass, clams, fish, water to drink, etc. Students can create menus and even decorate their menus as part of an art project. Share the students’ menus by having a “Forest Buffet Day.”

People and animals need food, water, shelter and space to survive. Have students make a list of ways they are like bears before they watch the movie. Then make a class list after watching the movie. How are we the same? How are we different? How are people like other animals? Have students play charades to act out behaviors. Here are some ideas for similarities and differences.
- How is George similar to the bears? He has hair, has warm blood, walks, sleeps, eats, drinks, yawns, itches, makes sounds, runs, grows, has a home, communicates, has five senses, breathes, fishes, needs sunlight, is a mammal, lives around other creatures, etc.
- How is George different from the bears? George uses a clock on the wall, a refrigerator, an alarm clock, a lamp for light and a can opener. He buys and cooks food, seasons food and sets the table for dinner. He wears clothes, he chooses to exercise, he uses a fishing pole to fish, he speaks with human language, etc.

SOCIAL STUDIES:

Pretend that your class is going to travel to Alaska. Let the children explore Alaska travel guides, books and pictures. Then plan where the class wants to go on their Alaskan vacation. Do they want to see Inuits? Do they want to fish with commercial fishermen? Do they want to visit the ocean? Do they want to climb a mountain to see sheep? By placing murals and pictures around the classroom, you can travel from spot to spot in the classroom, as if you were on a mini Alaskan safari. Depending on what exciting spots you visit on your tour, you can gear this activity toward culture, nature or history.
Have students make a timeline of their average day. What happens first? What happens later (this can help teach chronology of events)? Then compare that to a day for the Alaskan brown bears or a day for George.

MATH:

Have the children bring their teddy bears from home to school. Then sort the bears according to size, hair color, etc. Put bears in different orders and patterns. You can even weigh and measure the bears. Who has the smallest, heaviest or tallest bear?
Create a life-size cut-out of a mother bear with her cubs. Measure the height/size of students to the bear. Show pictures and drawings of bears in books, and then compare the size of the drawings to real-life size. How do scale drawings and models relate to real objects? (The average adult grizzly bear is about 3.5 to 4 feet high at the shoulders when on all fours, and 6 to 7 feet long. The average six-month old grizzly cub is 1.5 feet high at the shoulders, and 3 feet long.)

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Give students story starters after watching the movie. For example, “One day I met George in Alaska and . . .” Then students can practice writing, spelling, grammar, creative expression, etc.
Have students write poems about an Alaskan animal. They can write short poems using alliteration (the happy hare hops and hides, hops and hides, hurray!). They can write short poems describing the animal, focusing on adjectives or other parts of speech.

ART:

Watch Bearly Alike and look for colors of the rainbow. Have students create their own drawings or paintings using the Alaskan palette of colors.
Have students build a home or habitat for an Alaskan animal. They can use clay, paper and paint to create a scene in a shoebox. The class can put all their shoebox homes together to create an animal neighborhood.

ENVIRONMENTAL/OUTDOOR EDUCATION:

Give each student a rectangular frame cut out of construction paper, and then go outside on a photo safari hike. Tell the students they are going outside to take photographs of nature. Have students walk around, while looking through their frames, to find a scene they would like to photograph. They can hold up their frames to capture a “picture” and show the class or a partner. During this activity, you can have students look for different colors, shapes and textures. You can have students put their frames on the ground and watch what happens inside their picture . . . like watching television. Do ants crawl by? Is the grass blowing? What is happening inside their frame? Students can write stories about what is happening inside their frame. Students can also draw a picture of what is inside their frame. If you have students draw pictures, you can put together a classroom book, featuring their own scenes from around the school.
Go outside and do a class observation activity. Have students stand and watch animals who are performing behaviors. As a class, you can make a list of different animal behaviors. For example, squirrels might jump and walk. Birds might fly and sing. Which behaviors are like human behaviors? Which ones are different? Divide the class into two sections, one that looks for behaviors like humans, and one that looks for behaviors different from humans. The two groups can take turns acting out behaviors, while the other group guesses.
In Bearly Alike, a few scenes show bear tracks in the sand. Talk to your students about animal tracks and signs. How can you tell an animal was somewhere, even if you can’t see it? Take students outside to become animal detectives, looking for signs of animals around the school. They might find a feather, some fur, a hole in a tree, a nest, etc. You can also plant some props outside, such as an animal track in the playground sand, or some fur by a tree. Have students make plaster casts of animal tracks. They can measure their own shoe prints and compare them to squirrel tracks, rabbit tracks, etc.
People and animals both use sounds to communicate. How do animals communicate, since they do not speak human language? Take students outside and have them sit in a circle. Ask them to close their eyes and listen for different nature sounds they hear. Are birds calling? Is the wind blowing? Are chipmunks running through the grass? Have the students open their eyes and name some sounds they heard. How do sounds vary? Which ones are loud? Soft? High? Low? How do humans use their own voices to communicate? When are we loud? Soft? High-pitched? Low-pitched?

Web site Resources:

http://www.kidsplanet.org
maintained by Defenders of Wildlife, with links about many animals for children as well as teachers

http://www.bear.org
maintained by the North American Bear Center; includes a special Kids’ Page

http://www.grizzlydiscoveryctr.com
maintained by the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center, with information and links about grizzly bears in the Yellowstone area

http://www.americanbear.org
maintained by The American Bear Association and Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary

http://www.bearden.org
maintained by The American Zoo and Aquarium Bear Advisory Group with facts, games, photos and links related to different bear species

http://www.brownbear.org
maintained by Brown Bear Resources, a nonprofit company in Missoula, Montana

http://www.greatbear.org
maintained by the Great Bear Foundation, with facts, news and some educational resources about bears

http://www.shadowofthebear.com
maintained by a bear-lover, who provides good photographs, links to information about bears and some educational resources for teachers

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