We're Going on a Bear Hunt

Student Activities

I imagine this as a collaborative activity between older children and younger children within the UK primary school age range (3 - 11 years).  This brief can obviously be adapted according to the school structure and needs.  Before beginning activities teachers can demonstrate available tools as necessary.  I would ideally have some of the older children (UK years 4, 5 and 6) do the older children's activity and then present it to a younger class (UK Reception or years 1 and 2).

The older children will use Minecraft to recreate "We're Going on a Bear Hunt", using both the written words of the book, written on signs or similar, and visuals to recreate the settings.  They can do it however they please as long as it has a clear structure of moving through the different sections of the story.  The sections are as follows:

A house, grass, a river, mud, a forest, snow, a cave with a bear in it.  Then when the bear is revealed, they run back home.

Students can challenge themselves by incorporating more advanced tools and features such as redstone contraptions and/or command blocks.  They would then ideally present this to the younger children.

The younger children will then explore the story as laid out in the game, reading the words written on the narrative tools while moving through the recreated settings according to the story.  Ideally they would have an older child helping to guide them through the story.  It could also be performed during assembly or to a class during a story time, with one person reading the story while the other acts it out live in game.