Paddington Bear Study

Homeschool Review Crew

I have long loved the Paddington Bear books.  They’re so cute and good teachable moments.  Recently as part of the Homeschool Review Crew we’ve been taking a deeper look at Paddington Bear.  This Paddington Bear Study is from Branch Out World as part of their Picture Book Explorers Series.  These are literature studies on children’s books.  

About the Study

This is a super cute study!  The author is a home educator from the UK.  All books in the literature based studies, such as the Paddington Bear Study, have a link to the UK whether it is their setting, where the author is from, or where the illustrator is from.  This is particularly fun for us as we have family who live in England.  In fact, they’re coming back over this fall and we just might have to share some of our fun study with them.

As a literature based unit study this is geared to ages five through ten though with a little more prep by the homeschool mom(or dad) this could easily be used with older children as well.  I’ll share below how I did that with my up to age 13 children as well as including my two year old.  The study comes as a downloadable PDF which you can then print out.  Printing is of course something I love to do.  I print the whole thing out so I can work with it and then print off the pieces that I’ll need for my children.  In total it’s 69 pages and includes over 45 pages of fun printables and things to do plus over 30 activities to be done.

Some of the fun learning things are:

• migration
• develop grammar skills
• find their own sources of inspiration(and fly with them!)
• discover principles of design and architectural features
• experiment with foam
• find out what species of bear Paddington is
• explore parallel lines
• develop their spatial awareness
• enjoy a cream tea
• make marmalade
• have geography fun as well
• also I’m adding in how fun it is to view things from a different perspective, in this case someone from another country

How We Used

First off I printed off the entire thing for myself. I  find it easier to look at and plan things when I can have them in my hand.  

I love the premise of the study.  Basically you take a book and cover it for five days.  Each day you’ll study a different aspect of the book but you will read the book each day.  Not only does this promote being able to glean new things from the story each day but it also helps to focus and pinpoint things that are normally glossed over.

For this Paddington Bear Study we borrowed a copy of the book from the library.  We had a pocket size copy but I was worried it might be abridged so wanted to get a guaranteed full copy.  While at the library I also happened across another Paddington book which I of course had to check out and add to our free reads basket.  I would have loved to get the BBC Paddington series as well to go along with our study but haven’t been able to locate it locally.

I wanted to find the book A Bear Called Paddington which is more of a chapter book for older children but our library didn’t have it available.  They did however have Paddington Helps Out so we grabbed that one to bring home for a free read.

The study starts with a before you start section telling you what you need to have on hand to make this the best study ever.

Daily Focus

Day One

Each day has a different focus. Day one the focus is on exploring the setting.  There are lots of subheadings and fun things to do under this day.  One of the main things we did on day one was read books about London, England, and Peru to get acquainted with their cultures.  My cousins from England brought us an Atlas of the UK last time they visited so we had fun exploring that in relation to where Paddington might have visited and where we’d like to visit someday.

Other fun things we talked about was migration and why people migrate.  There are fact sheets in the PDF that we printed out with information on this and some Push/Pull factors.  We talked about migration to the US at the beginning of our country and also since then.  For a more recent stick it where they might remember we talked about how my Grandma, the kids great grandma, came over to the US from England and why she did that plus all about her long boat ride.  I’ve found making it personal really is a great way to help memory.  

Day Two

Day two is all about exploring the words.  Probably my favorite day as a a grammar geek.  To start we of course read the book again.  Then we did some studying about the author.  This led to a chat about what other forms the book can be in such as on audio, turned into a movie, etc.  

My kids have a pretty varied vocabulary as I’ve always read big books aloud to them from young ages.  But we took time to talk about any words that might not be easily understood or that have more than one meaning.  We also chatted about how different countries spell words differently. 

Now onto the fun!  Okay so maybe it’s just fun to me.  We worked on pointing out the “bad grammar” within the book.  And then of course this led to a discussion on the writer writing correct grammar or writing how someone might actually talk.  The reading of the book is what makes the Paddington Bear study the most fun as you can put emphasis on those little grammar parts and the giggles will come!

Another fun part of this section is narration and having your child tell you the story back.  We did this in sections so that each child got a section to tell.  Then I allowed other children to chime in if there was something else in the section that they remembered that wasn’t covered.  It’s always fun and amazing to see what different children pick out as important.

Day Three

On day three the focus goes to exploring the pictures which was very fun.  This Paddington Bear study just keeps getting more and more fun!  Guys, I learned so much this day!  There was a lot of focus on architectural features and so we went over the provided list and had all kinds of fun seeing if we could find them in our house.  Now I want to take the kids to some old houses and museums so we can use this newfound knowledge.  After all if you don’t use it you lose it!

We did study the pictures as well and took time to look at each illustration and point out the tiny details.  Why are they there?  What do they add?  This led to each child getting to create their own drawing and then talking about how several people who are drawing the same thing can come up with such different results.  

Being that I’m the person I am I do have to admit that the drawing isn’t my favorite part.  I love talking about elements of illustrations and how they help draw our eyes to certain areas but I’m not very good at drawing.  This year I have really been convicted in the lack of art that my children have been exposed to.  I always let them draw and color but I’m no help in making those things better.  Here’s to doing more of our own drawings this year!

Day Four

Moving on to day four brings us all the science fun.  Have I ever mentioned I don’t like messy experiments because my kids get them all over?  Yeah.  It’s true.  This section has a lot of fun crafts to do.  We first explored the type of bear that Paddington is and then got online to find more pictures of bears like him and to research where they live, eat, etc.

One experiment is making shaving cream play and then making your own foam.  Two types of foam are made, one for fun and observation and one for eating!  Meringue cookies are fun to bake so we chose to do that one together while they just watched the foam demonstration.  I had my older children do the demonstration for the youngers.  Other fun things are talking about and exploring steam plus gardens.

Day Five

Ending with day five and exploring math and crafts in our Paddington Bear study.  Math and parallel lines began this fun.  An exercise on packing stems from Paddington and his marmalade.  What would you pack for a holiday?  It’s always fun to see what the younger kids would take while the older children are very practical.  Well except for wanting to take loads of books to read.  

This day brings us actually playing with shaving cream and making it into an art.  We did not use food dyes but did use dehydrated fruits and veggies for some color as we have dye allergies in our house.  

Because this was a shorter day for us we used it to make the marmalade and tarts.  Super yummy and good.

We would have loved to be able to visit a zoo with a spectacled bear to see but unfortunately I’ve not found one near us that houses them.  Maybe someday we can go on vacation and see one!  We might just have to redo our Paddington Bear study as well!  Always more fun things to add in.

Learn More

Want to learn more?  Check out all the reviews linked up on the main post over on the Homeschool Review Crew blog.  You can also check out Branch Out World by going to facebook, pinterest, instagram, and twitter.