It is such a cute story about a lazy Bear who sleeps through every planting season. He strikes up a deal with a clever Hare. The deal is that Hare and his family will plant and harvest the crops on Bear's land and in return they get half of the crops. Hare asks Bear if he wants the top half or the bottom half of the crop. You will have to read the story to find out why Hare is so clever!
I LOVE this book for many reasons. One reason is for the illustrations. They illustrations really help hold the reader's attention. The book is actually opens vertically and not horizontally. This grabs children right away!
The story also teaches a great lesson and it provides an opportunity for children to practice determining importance. Children need to use higher level thinking skills to understand the lesson the story is trying to teach. It is also a great story to work on inferencing (another high level thinking strategy)! When we infer we take our background knowledge and combine it with text clues.
This book is a great springboard for studying plants! It is garden planting season, so get out and plant some vegetables. As you plant different vegetables you can talk about how they grow and what section (the top, bottom or middle) is the yummy part! Children are naturally curious and love learning about how things grow. If you cannot plant a garden you can always visit a local farmer's market and have the same conversations.
Some questions to guide your conversation:
1. Read to "He had lost a risky bet with a tortoise and had sold all of his land to Bear to pay off the debt." Ask your child: Do you know a story about a tortoise and a hare? What happened in that story?
2. Read to "It's a done deal, Bear" and ask your child: Why do you think Hare is willing to do all the work and split the profits? Do you think he might have a trick up his sleeve? What might it be?
3. Read to "Hare plucked off all the tops, tossed the into a pile for Bear and put the bottoms aside for himself" and ask your child: Predict how you think Bear is going to react to his part of the crops? How did Hare trick Bear?
4. Read to "It's a done deal, Bear" and ask your child: What trick do you think Hare has up his sleeve this time?
5. Read to "It's only fair that you get both tops and bottoms this time" and ask your child: Why would Hare give agree to give Bear the tops and bottoms? What crop do you think he might plant this time?
6. Read to "They never became business partners again" and ask your child: What is the lesson we are supposed to learn from this story? Have your child complete the following sentence starter: I want to remember....
Today is the last day to enter the giveaway of Janet Stevens newest book!
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