Brown Bear, Brown Bear Handprint Project

As a teacher of 2 year olds, we don’t have a ton of rigorous curriculum.

We are mostly learning basic principles of SURVIVAL – like don’t hit or bite people and SHARE THE TOYS.

But these tender hearts are so ready to learn!  So each month we focus on a different shape, number, and color.

One of the books we read (almost every day of the year) is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin and Eric Carle.  This book is wonderful for little people because of its repetition and strong focus on colors.

As a yearlong project, I decided to make a special Brown Bear Handprint Book for each student and their family that would feature their child’s handprint while retelling the beloved Brown Bear story.

Since we read the book so much in class, it makes for a wonderful keepsake that the children (at 2 years old!) can ‘read’ to their parents and siblings because they have the story completely memorized by the end of the year!

This book requires very little materials (which is one of the many reasons why I love it so much).

Brown Bear Handprint Keepsake Book

*I found so much inspiration for this project from Preschool Ideas for 2 Year Olds

Materials –

• 1 (1-inch) white binder
• Clear, plastic sleeves
• Paint
• Googly eyes (In a variety of sizes.  Also the self-adhesive googly eyes were awesome and helped so much!)
• Construction paper
• Black pen and colored markers
• Glue
• Scissors

Directions –

Each month of the school year we do a new handprint featuring the color that we are celebrating that month.  For example, in September we talk about the color red, so we make the red bird handprint.  In October we talk about the color orange, so we make the goldfish.

After 9 months of school, our book is ready!  We stick each page in a plastic sheet protector and then put the whole caboodle in a binder.

I made a simple cover design using the Brown Bear image I found at 1+1+1=1.

Here are the photos of each page…

Isn’t it darling?!

The horse is a bit of a stretch, I KNOW, but I honestly could not come up with any other way!  And we fudged a bit on the purple cat by using the foot, but that one is probably my favorite – oh, those tiny toes!!

The parents were SO HAPPY with them when we revealed the final product at the end of the year party.  And the kids were pretty proud of it because they had been working on it ALL YEAR.

I hope this book is something you can use with your kids or in your own classroom!  I will definitely be doing it again this year.

– Julie 🙂

*Did you love this?  Our class makes another special book every year about the Days of Creation.  You can find it HERE.*