This timeless picture book is a joyful adventure. It guides you through long wavy grass, a deep cold river, and more, all while looking for a big bear. The repetitive, sing-song text and engaging illustrations invite your little one to join in. This makes it a great choice for supporting speech and language targets.

What’s even more exciting is that the author, Michael Rosen, reads the story on YouTube. You can also find it on the Join the Bear Hunt website here.

• Repetition Builds Confidence – The repetitive, rhythmic text of “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt…” supports your child’s recall and memory, builds confidence and encourages your little one to join in.
• Fun New Words and Concepts – This book expands your child’s vocabulary. It introduces prepositions like ‘over’ ‘under’ ‘through’, and basic concepts like ‘wet’ ‘long’ ‘big’ ‘narrow’ and ‘dark’. It also has fun-sounding descriptive words like ‘squelch’ and ‘swishy’.
• Explore Different Places – Each scene, from the grassy hills to the dark forests, sparks curiosity. It offers opportunities to describe and talk about different places.
• Navigating Emotions – The story’s journey starts with the excitement of going on a bear hunt. The characters’ emotions change to nervousness and then relief. This helps you talk about different emotions and how emotions can change.

Find speech and language targets below ↓

Picture Book Themes & Interests

• Animals
• Places
• Family Adventures

Speech and Language Targets

Explore some speech and language targets. You can embed these targets into your story time with your little one at home. Meet your child at their level and focus on modelling 1-2 ideas at a time.

Related Post: 7 Reading Tips for Parents

Vocabulary & Concepts

• Animals – e.g., dog, bear
• Places – e.g., forest, cave, river
• Actions – e.g., walk, tiptoe, stumble
• Emotions – e.g., scared
• Describing words – e.g., big, beautiful
• Concepts – e.g., wet, dirty, deep, long, cold, dark, narrow, day
• Fun words – e.g., swishy-swashy, squelch squerch

Grammar Structure

• Prepositions – e.g., under, above, through
• Negatives – e.g., can’t, not
• Subjective pronoun – e.g., we
• Present verb tense – e.g., going

Gestalt Language Processing

If your child is a gestalt language processor (i.e., learns language in chunks or scripts), use the illustrations to make comments and model mitigable gestalts naturally.

Here are some examples of mitigable gestalts that you can include in your story time. These examples are not a ‘one size fits all’ as gestalts should be chosen based on your child’s interests and what is meaningful for them.

• We going on…
• I’m not scared
• What a beautiful day
• Let’s turn the page
• Quick, let’s go back

Comprehension Language Levels

Recalling (when you’ve finished the story)

• Where did they go?
• Who did they see?
• Who was in the story?

Describing

• What are they doing?
• What does it look like?
• What sound does the mud make?

Predicting and Sequencing

• Where will they go next?
• What will they say?
• How do they feel?
• How did they get home?

Reasoning

• Why are they hiding?
• Why did they need to shut the door?

Be mindful about how many questions you’re asking your preschooler, particularly if your child is a gestalt language learner. Asking too many questions or placing high demands on your preschooler can stifle the interaction and enjoyment of sharing toddler picture books. Instead, you can model the answers to these questions.

Narrative

• Sequencing through the places – grass, river, mud, forest, snowstorm, cave

Speech Sounds

• b – big, bear, beautiful, bed
• t – tap, tiptoe, touch
• k – catch, can’t, can, cave, covers, cold
• g – going, get, go, goggly
• w – we’re, what, walk, wet, whirling, wavy
• s-blends – swishy, swashy, stomp, stop, stumble, stairs, snowstorm, scared, splash, splosh, squelch, squerch

Sound Awareness

• Repetitive text

Published Walker Books Ltd 1993 (ISBN-10 0744523230)

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