Books in the Elementary Music Room: Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle

I love using books in my music classes! Picture books engage students in so many ways - visually hearing the story (sometimes with a song), seeing beautiful illustrations, and often acting out the story - that enrich their imaginations and help them create music. I'm planning to make a little series out of these posts, but today I'll be discussing Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle.

This adorable little book is the sequel to the well-known Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by the same authors. Each page follows a question and answer format, leading the reader through bright, large illustrations of each animal mentioned. I've used it in general music classes for a few different concepts:

• Vocal exploration (making animal sounds from the book and discussing how they are similar/different)
• Musical phrases (musical "questions and answers")
• Ensemble skills (differentiating between a soloist singing the question and the group singing the answer, or different groups singing the question and answer)
• Sequencing (remembering the order of animals in the book, creating new possible orders of animals and figuring out which words need to change to make that happen)
• Introduction to instruments (two animals in the book are described as "fluting" and "trumpeting", which I used as a chance to demonstrate flute and trumpet)

I also used this book as part of our December Singalong assembly. I learned a simple melody that works with the words of the book from another teacher, and taught parts to all my students K-5. At the assembly, we were able to put the whole thing together and sing the book as a school, complete with student trumpet and flute players for those animals! It was a really nice way to have all the students cooperating towards a common goal and having a lot of fun roaring, hissing, and snarling their way into December break.