All things Winter, part 4

In today's post, I'm continuing my love of polar bears with another song!

This song goes along with a great singable story:
Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you Hear? by Eric Carle.

I have found that many students (and adults) love the Eric Carle books.  The stories are interesting and the illustrations are very engaging.
This song goes right along with the text of the story.

I opted to use finger picking on the guitar so that students could focus on the book and story and not be distracted by louder chord strumming.  I encourage the students to sing along with the chorus each time.  We sing, "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you hear?  I hear a...", and then we look at each page of the book and see what comes next.  Many times the students are very good at imitating the sounds of each animal too!
A great way to implement this song/book activity with students who are nonverbal is to prerecord the chorus onto a BigMac (voice output device).  A picture of a polar bear placed under the switch cover is also a great idea.  You can let that student be the leader for the chorus each time and encourage the other students to sing with the student who is nonverbal each time she/he presses the switch (BigMac)
Another idea is to have pictures of each animal mentioned in the song and work towards students being able to sequence the animals in which they occur in the story.  Students can either hold up their animal as it is mentioned in the story or you can sequence the animals after the story has been read.

What other stories do you like to sing?

I hope these posts are helpful to you.  My next post will conclude the implementation ideas for my album, All things Winter.   More new songs posts are in the near future so come back soon!