A Teddy Bear Day

Keri at The Home Teacher has published this fun September calendar that I really liked. According to this calendar, it was a teddy bear day yesterday, and we decided to celebrate in style. I told Anna in the morning before school about a Teddy Bear Day and she got very excited. She started to plan her Teddy Bear celebration, and we played along. I purchased this Melissa and Doug Lacing Bear game for her some time ago, and yesterday it seemed like a perfect day to give it to her. So we wrapped it for her as part of a Teddy Bear Day celebration.

I suggested to Anna that she needs to write a card for her Teddy Bear. She took it very seriously. She took her pencils 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. Anna was so impatient that she reached and touched the cake as it was standing on the table. I was really mad and gave her a timeout. Well, she definitely remembered that.

When my husband saw this Melissa and Doug puzzle, he just shrugged and said, This is way too early! Sadly, he was right. The lacing part was way over Anna’s head, and she had no interest in even attempting it or watching me do it. Quite honestly, it was even not trivial for me to lace this bear up. It didn’t help that Anna 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 doubt that Anna will miss it.

We also managed to fit one little art project into our Teddy Bear Day. I printed a teddy bear pattern here, and Anna did the rest. 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 :)

Of course, our Teddy Bear Day wouldn’t be complete without books. And what could be more appropriate than Corduroy? We didn’t read it for a while, and Anna was pretty excited to see it again. It was a fitting end of our pleasant day.