We’re going on a bear hunt…we’re going to catch a big one…

We all know and love the classic ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ by Michael Rosen, which is why we chose it to be the theme of our 2011 Early Years Fiesta. The Early Years Fiesta is an event catering solely for pre-booked Early Years groups in the first week of May during SATs week. This year was such a fantastic success with record bookings, that ‘Early Years Week’ became ‘Early Years Three Weeks’. The feedback we have received so far has all been extremely positive, showing that this event was enjoyed by all.

This story, by its very nature, lends itself well to the outdoors, so we decided that it would be fantastic to make use of our newest outdoor exhibition, ‘The Wonder Walk’. Through this adventure the children were guided by two of our Eureka! explorers, where they overcame the obstacles that the story threw at them on their quest to find the Bear. We used the willow structures for the ‘long wavy grass’, water trays for the ‘splishy splashy river’, ‘icky sticky mud’, trees and branches for the ‘deep dark forest’, and artificial snow for the ‘swirling whirling snow storm’, the overall effect was fantastic!

Looking for the Bear

Even though we love the Bear Hunt story we could not resist putting our own Eureka! spin on it and so added a new magical element to the story. This was in the form of a kind Eureka! Fairy who had left some of her fairy dust for the children. The children were asked to take a pinch of this glittery dust and to think of their favourite animal, then sprinkle the dust in the air to become that animal (with their imaginations switched on of course). We had allsorts of animals emerging, turning the Eureka! park in to a unique menagerie of animals.  This ranged from bears and tigers to dinosaurs and unicorns galloping and flying around the Wonder Walk. However, this fairy dust is notorious for wearing off quickly and all too soon we were all human once again, carrying on with our journey to find the bear- who as it turned out, like everything at Eureka! was very friendly too.      

Finding the bear

The weather was not always on our side but we had a fantastic time ‘Swishy Swashing’, ‘stumble triping’ and ‘Squish Squashing’ our way through the Wonder Walk.

The Eureka! version of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ is open to the public until 3 June (tomorrow). Let us know what you thought of it and which other stories you would like us to add a bit of Eureka! magic to.

 Penny Dargan-Makin is the Early Years Specialist Enabler at Eureka!