A Teddy Bear Day

Here is how we turned a regular day into a special teddy bear day celebration. I also included resources, activities, and free printables for teddy bear theme.

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Why Celebrate Obscure Holidays?

Did you know that September 9 is a Teddy Bear Day? Now when I am a parent, I get to know all kinds of special days. While we cannot possibly celebrate all of them, especially while working full time, my almost 3 year old is thrilled when I announce a special day. She knows that it means special activities and a special time with Mama after work. All the things that we do on days like this stick with her for a long time afterwards.

Make the Day Special

To make our teddy bear afternoon special, I wrapped the book that we were going to read. Smarty was very excited to see a “present” even though the book was not new to her. She couldn’t wait to read it to her bear.

Encourage Your Young Children to Write

Smarty is not very interested in writing or drawing, but when I suggested to her to write a card for her teddy bear she took it very seriously. She took her pencil and began to scribble while slowly dictating to herself, Dear Bear! Congratulations on your special day. I am very excited to come to your party. You will have a cake, but you can only eat it if you are a nice boy. Don’t touch the cake until mama tells you that it’s OK. The last part was a reference to an incident that we had at the last birthday party we attended. Smarty was so impatient that she reached and touched the cake as it was standing on the table. I was not pleased with her and gave her a timeout. Well, she definitely remembered that.

Read About Teddy Bears

We read many wonderful books about teddy bears, but for this teddy bear day I chose Corduroy by Don Freeman. It’s one of Smarty’s favorites, but we haven’t read it for a while. Our other favorites include a very funny story Where Is My Teddy? by Jez Alborough and, of course, Winnie the Pooh by Arthur Milne.

Lace a Bear

When my husband saw this Melissa and Doug lacing bear dress-up puzzle, he just shrugged and said, This is way too early! He was quite right. The lacing part was way over my daughter’s head (she is turning 3 in October), and she had no interest in even attempting it. She also kept changing her mind about the outfits every 10 seconds and then I had to unlace a half-finished bear and then lace her up again. After she played with it for a little bit I sent the puzzle back into its “for later” box, and I can add now, while updating this post, that she could only do this puzzle properly in the first grade when she was 6.

Decorate a Teddy Bear

We also managed to fit one little art project into our Teddy Bear Day. I printed a teddy bear pattern here, and asked Smarty to decorate it. She got progressively more animated as she was drawing and told me that this teddy is sick and that’s why he has dots all over. Then she grabbed her toy teddy again and was off taking him to a hippo doctor :)

More Teddy Bear Resources

• Fashion teddy bear with free templates from Mama Smiles: Joyful Parenting
• Teddy Bear Picnic Fun from The Educators Spin on It
• Teddy Bear Cookies from Cute Everything
• Montessori Teddy Bear activities from Living Montessori Now
• Free patterns to sew your own teddy bears from About.com

Follow my preschool language arts Pinterest board

Your Turn:

Do your children have a favorite stuffed animal? Who is it? (It’s a stuffed kitty here).
I link this post to my favorite kid blogger link ups and sharing days.

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