Cave Craft for Forest Theme

We were so busy in the month of December that I didn’t get to post many of our forest theme activities. One of our favorite crafts was this torn paper bear cave. We spent a full week learning about bears, and we used this craft for many free play and learning activities.

We read many different books about bears, but our main read aloud for the week was We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. All of the kids enjoyed acting out this story and participating in retelling the story throughout the week.

To go along with this story we made caves out of tea boxes. I wanted to incorporate some fine motor practice into this activity, so I had the kids tear brown construction paper to cover our caves.  Happy Brown House has more great tips about tearing paper as a way to improve fine motor skills. If you have never done a tearing activity with kids, you might be surprised at how difficult this can be for them in the beginning. With a little guidance and modeling, they will be able to do it in no time…and they will probably love the activity since we usually tell them NOT to tear things up.

After the kids felt like they had enough paper to cover their caves, we attached them to each side of the tea box with glue.

After a bit of time to dry, the caves were ready for their bear friends to move in and start playing. This cave could easily be incorporated into a small world play scene or used by itself for pretend play. We used the bear from our Safari Ltd North American Wildlife Toob for some pretend play and a Hungry Bear ABC Game. Another day we included gummy bears for a math game.

Have you done any bear cave activities with your kids?

MORE FOREST FUN WITH PRINTABLE LESSON PLANS

Save time and get right to the playful learning with our printable lesson plan sets. Each set includes over 30 playful learning activities related to the theme, and we’ve provided different versions for home preschool families and classroom teachers so all activities are geared directly toward your needs.

This set currently includes active hands-on learning ideas and the following printables:

1) Forest vs Ocean Animals Sorting Activity
2) Forest Animal Addition Activity
3) The Forest Emergent Reader (3 Versions)
4) Forest Roll and Graph Cube and Recording Sheet
5) “A Walk in the Forest” Math Game Board
6) Number Cubes for “A Walk in The Forest” and other Math Games (4 Versions)
7) Animal Tracks Matching Cards (in color and b/w)
8) Forest Animal Picture Cards (in color and b/w)
9) Forest Animal Pictures with Labels (in color and b/w)
10) Forest Animal Word Cards (in color and b/w)
11) Forest Animal Syllable Sorting Activity Mats
12) Forest Letter Puzzles (in color and b/w)
13) Teddy Bear Pattern Prompt Cards

GET YOUR LESSON PLANS

Home Preschool Forest Theme Lesson Plans

Preschool Classroom Forest Theme Lesson Plans

Also available on Teachers Pay Teachers.