cumulative and circular books 2

  Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? 




Martin, B. (1992). Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? New York: Henry Holt and Company. 


ISBN : 0-8050-1744-5 


Summary : 


This is a circular story about a brown bear, describing what he sees. First Brown Bear  starts off with “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?” then describes the next animal he sees, “I see a red bird looking at me” and this repeats throughout the book. In the end, it asks the children of the class what they see, so a little participation from the class is involved. 


This book is great for children from ages 2-5 because the vocabulary and text in the story is very easy to understand, colours and animals are also present. The illustrations are very unique as it seems like they’re drawn with different textures. 


Provocation : 


Binoculars or magnify glasses could be set up around the classroom, with pictures of animals such as bears, dogs, frogs, birds, taped on the walls. 


Ways to read the book :


1. Felt, felt story should consist of all of the animal characters, a bear, red bird, yellow duck, blue horse, green frog, purple cat, white dog, black sheep, and a gold fish. 


2. Audience participation : children can choose to be an animal, and masks could be printed out online. They can describe the animal that they see next, all of the other children who do not have a role as an animal, can be the children at the end of the book who says “we see a teacher looking at us” 


3. Magnets, you can use a cookie sheet the magnet board, and you can have all of the animals on magnets, either printed out pictures or the magnet itself. 


Extensions : 


1. Arts and drawing, after reading the story you can have the children draw some of their favourite animal and make a mask out of it, then you can go through the story again, using all of the animal masks that the children has made. 


2. Game/activity, you can hide pictures of different types of animals around the classroom or maybe outside near the playground area and with them use a magnify glass or binoculars (could be made from toilet paper tubes cut in half) to go around and describe what they see. 


3. Field trip, you can set up a class field trip to the zoo to see some of these animals.