Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? is a beloved children’s book with repetitive and predictable rhyming patterns on each page. A new animal is introduced who encourages the small reader to discover which creature will show up next.
“Blue Horse, Blue Horse, What do you see? I see a
green frog looking at me.”
This book is the “sight” version of Bill Martin and Eric Carle. It encourages students to use their sense of sight to identify the color and animal on each page. Brown Bear also introduces the student to associate the sense organ with the sense (sight-eyes). Carle uses tissue-paper collage illustrations.
Curriculum Connections
This book can be used in Kindergarten and first grade. Brown Bear can be used as an introduction to the five senses in Kindergarten as the student learns the sense of sight. In Virginia, Brown Bear can be used in connection with the SOL K.2a where students investigate and understand the five senses and the corresponding sense organ.
Additional Resources
- The website, The Virtural Vine, has multiple ideas to use Brown Bear for making a class book, sequencing, categorizing, memory game, graphing, and language art connections.
- This website, A to Z teacher stuff, has thematic units based on brown.
- This website has lesson plans to use with each of the five senses.
Book: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See
Author: Bill Martin, Jr.
Illustrator: Eric Carle
Publisher: Henry Holt & Co.
Publication Date: Sept. 1996
Pages: 32 pages
Grades: K-1
ISBN: 0805047905