Social Skills

Parenteau, Shirley. (2009). Bears on Chairs. Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press.

ISBN 978-0-7686-3588-6

This is a cute book about four little bears trying to share their chairs with a big bear. Calico Bear, Fuzzy Bear, Yellow Bear, and Floppy Bear each have a chair to themselves and they are all very happy sitting on their chairs. Then Big Brown Bear came alone but there is no more room for him. He tried to share a chair with Floppy Bear but the chair is too small for the two bears to share. Big Brown Bear is very sad so Calico Bear moved his chair to Floppy bears and the three bears tried to shared two chairs but it’s still not enough. In the end, Fuzzy Bear and Yellow Bear joined in and all five bears together found a way to solve the problem – put all four chairs together and all five bears shared one long chair.

This is a great book to use with 3-5 years old becaue the concept and the words the author used in the book is simple to understand. This book is also a good book to use while trying to teach children how to solve a problem together with their friends.

Because the story was simple, the illustrations used in this book are also very simple. The characters in the book are very colorful yet the colors used gave a warm and fuzzy feeling. 

Provocations: 

Bring in four small teddy bears, set them on four chairs in your center and one big teddy bear and sit it on the floor beside the four small bears on the chairs.

Presentations:

1) Chunking the Book - read the book to children and pause at different places and wonder with children what are the bears going to do next.

2) Audience Participation - involve children in acting out the story. You could either cut out copy of the bears or have the children pretend to be bears or be themselves in the act.

3) Puppet - use the teddy bears you brought in for the provocation and tell the story via a puppet show.

Extensions:

1) Play the game of musical chair with children following the traditional rule of eliminating participant when he/she do not get to a chair when music stop

2) Play another game the involve group cooperation - assign a certain area or a number of chairs to all children, but the area or the number of chairs should be less than the number of children. Then ask children to come out with a plan to have everyone being inside the area or sitting on the chairs. This is more appropriate for older children and in a smaller group setting.  

3) Present different objects in different amount to children and explore the concept of more and less with them via counting the quantity of the objects.