Bear Stays Up Late for Christmas Gross Motor Activities for Kids

Hi, I’m Cassie from 3 Dinosaurs. I’m so happy to be part of the Storybook Avent again! We have decided to continue with our Christmas Gross Motor Activities and this year focus on one of the fun books. These activities are ideal to keep kids activity during the wet, rainy day and snowy days that lead up to Christmas.

Bear Stays Up for Christmas

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We love doing this each year. I had my girls pick out our book this we would be part of. They picked Bear Stays Up for Christmas.

This is one of our favorite Christmas books and we love the bear series by Karma Wilson.

Christmas Gross Motor Activities

We love gross motor activities at our house and we still do book themes and gross motor activities together. They are always fun to do. We are sharing a few fun ways to get kids moving with this book.

We thought it would be fun to do some gross motor activities inspired by The Bear Stays Up for Christmas because you are trying to keep bear awake and what is better than few movements to keep you moving.

Gross motor activities to stay up late at night!

The Gross Motor Movements

The Yawn movement
One of the first parts of the book is waking up the bear. Bear is sleeping and his friends want to wake him up. He does a big yawn and stretches. We started on the ground and worked to stretch up with spreading our arms our wide.

You can see them start on the ground crouched down. The slowly rise up from the ground.

And they end up with the big yawn stretch at the end. You can have them stand on their tiptoes as they spread out their arms.

Bear walking
The next we have a bear walk. My girls pointed out you can’t have a bear book and not do a bear walk. Bear walking is always fun because you can change it up so many ways. We did a simple bear walk back and forth. If you want to have some fun try my Bear Walking Dice to change it up.

Stomping through the Woods
In the book they go stomping through the woods to get a tree! I love stomping. It is great fun for kids and well me too. This is an action that has high knees that you bring up and down. You want BIG movements for kids to make. So really high knees and stomping noise when the foot comes down.

Popcorn
I love that almost all her books have popcorn in them. It is a fun movement. You can do it over and over. The idea is that you pop like popcorn and jump into the air with legs and arms spread out. I encourage my girls to get as high as they can.

Stir the fruitcake
In the story, they also stir fruitcake. We did a BIG exaggerated stirring motion. We did as big a movement stirring in a circle in front of us. I love the stirring motion because it works on pushing and pulling your arms from your body.

Sleeping friends
After all, the moving around we had fun being sleeping friends on the floor. We rocked slightly side to side. It was a fun way to see them slow down.

Jumping for Presents
The last movement we did in the book was for the presents. Everyone was excited and jumping to see them. So we did some big jumps in the air. It was fun to see how high they could jump.

There are several other movements you could do with the book

– Clopping the tree down
– flying like birds
– walk like a badger
– hop like a bunny
– Any of the animal movements not mentioned
– You could also make use a cube dice and cards from the Bear Snores On Pack to make an animal dice activity.

Check out these other Christmas activities to check out:

• Spinning and Prancing Christmas Themed Gross Motor Dice
• Bear Walking Dice
• 25+ Christmas Crafts and Activities for Kids

 More Large Motor Activities for Kids at Christmas

• Polar Express Gross and Large Motor Activities
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Gross and Large Motor Activities