Hands-On Activity for The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett

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Jan Brett is one of my all-time favorite picture book authors! I have loved each and every book I’ve read of hers. The illustrations in her books are just beautiful, and I love the way she tells a story within a story with the pictures on the sides of each page.

With the bitter cold temperatures we’ve had lately, I pulled out our winter-themed Jan Brett books. I love The Hat, The Mitten, Who’s That Knocking On Christmas Eve?, and The Three Snow Bears. I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to “play” with this month so I settled down on the couch to reread through them all.

After reading through them all, I decided to use The Three Snow Bears. This book offers a unique spin on the traditional “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” story as Aloo-ki  searches for her lost sled dogs. In her search, she happens upon an igloo which she can’t help but explore. You’ll have to read the book yourself to see what happens next.

There are so many fun activities that can be done in conjunction with each of the books I mentioned. Ultimately, however, my daughter and I decided on the perfect hands-on activity for The Three Snow Bears. She thought it would be fun to make a sugar cube igloo. With a box of sugar cubes and a can of frosting, we were all set.

I thinned the frosting it a bit so it would be less ‘gloppy’, and it worked very well to glue the cubes together. My sweetie had so much fun building up the walls of the sugar cube igloo.

Unlike the igloo that Aloo-ki explored – the one the three snow bears lived in – ours has no roof. I could not figure out how to round off the top of my igloo. However, in retrospect, I think it could be done with a little pre-planning. Next time we do this activity, I will have her build the igloo around a cup. I think a small styrofoam cup would work great. The cubes would have something to rest on while the icing/glue dries. Then, you can pull the cup out, and you would be left with an igloo with a roof.

We decided our Nutcracker would enjoy living in the igloo even without its roof. What do you think?

To round out a lesson using The Three Snow Bears, you could check out Jan Brett’s website.