Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Today's lesson requires you to recall signs taught in previous lessons and is a good way to practice what you know. If you've been watching my videos, you've already learned most of the animal signs from the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. We also already know the color signs, so this should be fairly easy. Of course preschoolers and kindergartners enjoy this book, but older students also love revisiting it as they incorporate the learning of sign language.

To teach this lesson to your class, you could use a felt board and felt characters from the book. I would hold up a character, such as the red bird, teach (or re-teach) the sign, and then hand that character to a student. Reassure the class that you'll re-read the story several times so that everyone will get a turn. After you've handed out all the characters, read the book, asking students to sign along with you. (If you can't hold the book and sign at the same time, put the book on an easel. If you have a reader, they could point to the words as you read.) As you get to each character, the student holding that character can come forward to put it on the felt board. *This could also be a sequencing activity, keeping track of the order in which the animals are mentioned in the book. At the conclusion, review signs by pointing to an animal and having students give the sign for the color and/or the animal.