Educating With Teddy Bears

Ground Hog Day - February 2, 2009!



What better way to celebrate Ground Hog Day than with new clothes for your teddy bear. They will keep your bear feeling warm and fuzzy and brighten up the day.

Follow the links to the Teddy Bear Clothing when you get to The Teddy Bear Store.

International Day of Peace was celebrated September 21, 2008.

This day is the United Nation's International Day of Peace. It is a "...global holiday when individuals, communities, nations and governements highlight efforts to end conflict and promote peace..."

A number of Teddy Bears On the Go visited our Canadian Troops while they were overseas as Peace Keepers.

One of the first Teddy Bears On The Go to travel abroad was Cuddles. He learned a great deal about weapons, razor wire and was involved in a number of training exercises with the troops!

Learn about Fuzzy, one of our teddy bears on the go, and his visit to Afghanistan. Fuzzy's trip occurred during a time when Canadian troops were stationed in Afghanistan during the year 2004-2005 school year.

Date: Sept. 12, 2007
From: Teachers Mentoring Teachers Headquarters

Educating with Teddy Bears was the Featured Lens of the Week in the Teachers Mentoring Teachers Group at Squidoo! "Lenses are chosen based on lensrank, time of year, originality, and opinion of the groupmaster."

Thanks so much, Thialee!
Liz

During the school year, teddy bears travel with traveling companions, reporting back to the students about their many adventures and the friends they meet along the way.

The first year that they journeyed, they landed on all 7 continents.

Parents, students, teachers and travelers lovingly embraced the teddy bears on the go and sent many travel stories and postcards back to the students in the classroom.

Keep watching for the video that we received back from Chip's Travels Abroad.

I am sure by now, some of you are wondering exactly, "just what IS happening in the classroom, anyway?"

Well, I am glad you asked!

The traveling teddy bears program had its seed in a conversation that I had with a group of teachers after school one Friday. During the discussion, someone shared her experiences about her Grade 5/6 classroom's teddy bear adventures. In this case, the students had taken a bear from their collection at home, put it together with a journal and a bag, and then had the bear leave town by whatever means they could find.

Over the course of the year, stories, adventures, and treasures made their way back to the classroom for the students to enjoy!

From those basic ideas, I implemented the concept in my classroom December 2001.

What makes this so special for me is that inspite of the concerns and increased travel regulations because of 9/11, the teddy bears were out and about, traveling safely and returning to their owners many stories and memorabilia over the course of the year.

From then on, this approach to learning was a given if you were a student in my classroom.

Having established a good solid base for the program, additional items were added to increase student involvement in the process and their learning.


During a poetry unit one year, students were able to incorporate the countries their bears had traveled to into the poetry form being studied [for example: haiku, acrostic, rhyming/non-rhyming]. I didn't have a problem getting them motivated to do this because they were already motivated about talking about their teddies. It was all about their bear.

Another year, groups of students took jot notes [about the bear's adventures] while a postcard was being read about a given bear's travels. Later this information was put into a final group report and submitted to the front office for inclusion into the school newsletter. The students just LOVED seeing their names in the school newsletter as being the reporters for the monthly updates.

Every year, some of the teddy bears did not get the opportunity to travel, so they joined us in our classroom activities. The students were asked to record field trip events, reading activities, and other learnings in the teddy bears' journals. What was really great is that students would READ other entries before they wrote their own. How is that for getting kids to read without them being aware?

In the 5th year of this program all students participated in creating a Teddy Bear Lap Quilt Block. It was an exciting time. There were a total of 7 adults, 27 students, 5 sewing machines and lots of fabric! The kids had a wonderful time.

They created a template for their quilt block pattern, chose fabric pieces that would work best with the pattern of their choice: 9-patch, log cabin, or triangles, sewed the pieces together and then quilted the backing, batting and the quilt top together. The lap quilt blocks were later posted on the bulletin board outside our classroom for all to enjoy. It was great to hear students comment about their friends' quilt blocks as they passed down the hall.

We did experience some challenges along the way. As a result, I had a lap quilt pattern created to make it easier for students and parents to complete. See Teddy Bears On The Go(R) - Part 3.

As mentioned in Teddy Bears On The Go(R) Part 2, above, I commissioned a student friendly, lap quilt block pattern called "Teddy Bears On The Go: Nine Patch Quilt Block" . Some parent supervision may be required.

This product is available through The Teddy Bear Store by following the links to Other Products.

Here is one of the traveling teddy bear stories from the first year that the teddy bears journeyed outside of their city.

This little bear's name is Puffy and during one of his journeys with his traveling companion [grandmother], he ended up at school in Cuba.

What was really spectacular about Puffy's travels to Cuba was that while he was in the one-room school, the students from all grade levels fell in love with him and didn't want him to leave! They wrote, in Spanish, about their culture and families in Puffy's journal, which was later transcribed into English.

In Cuba, paper is at a premium and not used the same way that our society [North America] uses notebooks, paper and journals. The students were fascinated by the paper and were very anxious to "write" to Puffy in his journal.

After we received a copy of these letters in our classroom, my students were motivated and very excited to write penpal letters back to the children in Cuba.

My students learned about Cuban culture and the love that the Spanish children had for their teachers and families. They expressed themselves in the teddy bear's journal to children in Canada they didn't know.

This kind of experience by my students is something that they remember, years after the event. More specifically for the child whose bear was Puffy, The Traveling Teddy Bear.

Puffy had an exciting time while he was in Cuba. His traveling companion found a local artisan who hand carved a class set of dolphins. They measure about 1 inch in length and are secured around the neck with a piece of embroidery floss.

The students were so excited when the package arrived in the classroom!

I still have mine tucked safely away in my jewelry box.

"For ev'ry bear that ever there was..." you will find one with a story. And the educating with teddy bears classroom is no different. Keep up to date with the teddy bears' mischievous adventures and their travels by subscribing to The Teddy Bear Chronicles.

When you arrive: Fill out the form that appears on the right hand side of the page

In The Beginning

I have a created brief history of the teddy bear for your reading pleasure about this lovable and cuddly stuffed toy.

~ early 1900's Margarete Steiff [Germany] started working on a stuffed bear designed from sketches created by her son.

~ at the same time, in the United States, President "Teddy" Roosevelt was featured in a cartoon created by Clifford Berryman [above].

~ this cartoon was inspired by President Roosevelt's hunting trip that he took while he was trying to arbitrate a land dispute [1902].

~ President Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear that had been tied to a tree by his men.

~ a Russian immigrant saw the cartoon and he asked his wife to create a stuffed bear in the likeness of the bear in the cartoon.

~ the bear was put into the shop window and shortly thereafter, it was sold. The Michtoms could not keep up with the demand for their teddy bears.

~ the Michtoms asked for permission to use the nickname, "Teddy's Bear", and having received permission began to mass produce the bear. And, Ideal Novelty and Toy Company was formed.

~ back in Germany, the Steiff company had just officially launched their first jointed bear. [Leipzig Trade Fair 1903]

~ an American asked for 3000 of these bears to be shipped to America.

~ the teddy bear craze continued throughout America, but most of the companies, except Gund Manufacturing, did not last a long time.

During The Middle Years: 1920s - 1970s

~ because of the wars, the teddy bear craze died down somewhat in Europe, but in America, it continued.

~ during the Second World War, the manufacturers turned their focus towards contributing to the war efforts, rather than making teddy bears.

~ after the war, society demanded easier-to-care-for toys which resulted in the use of synthetic fibers being used to create the stuffed toys [the original teddy bears were manufactured with natural fibers that could not be washed using conventional methods].

~ the manufacturing of teddy bears using synthetic fibers allowed the manufacturers in eastern Asia to produce the stuffed toys in a more cost effective way.

~ this process had created a new kind of teddy bear.

1980's to Present

~ during the late 1970s and early 1980s the teddy bear craze shifted again with the birth of "teddy bear artists".

~ the teddy bear artist is a person who creates a teddy bear by hand, using various mohairs, and real fur bears made from recycled fabrics.

~ with the teddy bear craze, such as it is...antique bears have become very valuable.

Most of the traveling teddy bear team members travel so many distances that sometimes they forget their basic math facts.

This worksheet website will help with basic math facts and other related school graphic organizers.

Engage your child/student in math concepts by incorporating traveling teddy bears into the math curriculum to improve student math skills. And, these concepts can be practised at home, too.

The math curriculum includes concepts in the following areas: Numeration and Number Sense [addition, subtraction, muliplication, fractions, decimals, percentages], Measurement [area, perimeter, length, volume, distance, time, temperature], Patterning and Algebra [growing and shrinking patterns, and patterns associated with simple algebraic expression and relationships], Probability and Data Management [read, organize, & interpret data, determine probability of outcomes of simple experiments such as tossing a coin], and Geometry and Spatial Sense [2D/3D shapes, use, create, understand co-ordinates on a grid].

Within each of these 5 areas of Mathematics there are a number of categories that need to be considered. Namely, knowledge and understanding of the content, the use of thinking and processing skills [critical thinking, creative thinking], communication of the information using a variety of venues: oral, visual, written, and then the application of the knowledge and skills to making connections in other contextual areas. Please note that variations in the curriculum and the above categories will occur among countries; but the principles should remain the same.

Integrated into all of this will be active problem solving.

So, let's start with a simple problem using traveling teddy bears as the theme:

Mitch the Teddy Bear leaves Pearson International Airport in Toronto, Ontario Canada for a flight across the Atlantic Ocean to land at London England's Heathrow Airport. The airplane flight takes about 7 hours. Assume that London, England is 5 hours ahead of us in time.

If Mitch leaves at 7:30PM EST on Thursday, what time will he arrive at Heathrow? [UK time].

Now, using a map, first estimate the number of miles/kilometers traveled by Mitch the Teddy Bear on this one way trip across the ocean. Then, using the scale on the map, calculate the exact distance traveled from Toronto, Ontario, Canada to London, England.

For an additional challenge consider this: if Mitch gets on the next plane back to Canada, how many miles/kilometers will he have traveled? How much time has Mitch spent traveling across the ocean?

Kids love to know about the teddy bears' travels and these concepts can be integrated into the math curriculum such as the problem above. Although this one is a multi-step one and perhaps not applicable to the younger primary grades, the ideas can be adapted to meet the grade specific needs.

Follow the link to kidsturncentral to find out what kind of teddy bear you are! I am a cuddly teddy bear.

I met a grandfather who fell in love with my traveling teddy bears, and this is what he had to say about his first teddy bear:

"I still have my first Teddy bear after some 76 years of hard knocks, missing eyes, ears, & paw pads. Straw is falling out at the wrists, and his voicebox protrudes from his abdomen. Still he is a happy little soul and sits in the family room enjoying the company of his friends."

His passion for teddy bears grew to the point where he started sewing his own set of bears just for fun. He acquired a couple of teddy bear making books, teddy bear supplies, and fabric and started on his first venture in the teddy bear construction business.

Grandfather's first completed teddy bear was a 17 inch, fully-jointed blue bear made from an old left over piece of terry cloth. This new member of grandfather's teddy bear collection [he is also an avid Beanie Baby Bear collector] joined the company of his 76+ year old antique bear, whose straw stuffing was poking out of his wrists.

Stay tuned for more pictures and updates of "Struggles' Bears".

Chip was a teddy bear that journeyed on a round-the-world tour with two traveling companions. Chip had many photo ops and got himself into some interesting situations.

This image shows Chip's destinations with his first stop being New Zealand and Australia. There he met so many new friends, as well as being able to visit the movie location of Lord of the Rings. Chip went on many tours, and almost got stuck in a HUGE wheel; but his traveling companions made sure that he was safe and sound.

Chip was in Australia for New Year's Eve and was able to experience the New Year down under, without snow!

Because Chip is a bear, he is used to snow. This picture, below, is when he returned home to Canada in the spring, after his journeys had taken him to hotter and more humid climates. I think that he felt much cooler because his fur was very hot in the tropical climates.