In this activity you will say to the students that they are a particular animal in winter, and then they will all act out the appropriate behavior. For example, if you say "you are swallow flying south in winter," the children will pretend to fly south. Have the children spread out so they each have enough room. Then, call out the following sentences, allowing the children enough time in between each sentence to act accordingly: "You are a skunk preparing a cozy den. You are a deer looking for food. You are a hibernating gopher. You are a bear sleeping in a cave. You are a frog asleep in the mud. You are a squirrel eating nuts." After you finish, you can say each sentence again, but leave out each action to see if they remember it. For instance, if you say "You are a bear," they should all pretend to hibernate.
Kidsparkz.com offers various activities that teach about North American animals that hibernate, such as Story Starter, which you can adapt and do without any printouts. On the chalkboard, write: "I am a big, brown grizzly bear, waking up from a long winter sleep. I am feeling very hungry. I will go down to the river, and catch a few __ to eat for dinner." Ask the children what word might fill in the blank. Write down each of their answers, discuss which ones could be correct, and explain why.
Help students make masks out of construction paper. Before class, use the bottom of a bottle to draw nice round eyes that you can then cut out. During class, let the children use pencils and markers to make their masks look like the faces of hibernating animals. You can suggest animals, such as bears, gophers, crocodiles, hedgehogs, tortoises, bats, raccoons, lizards, squirrels and bees to help them along. After they've finished, poke holes in each side of each mask and attach a string so they can wear their masks and pretend that they are their animals getting ready for hibernation, or just waking up from it.
You and your students can make bears that go in and out of their caves. You will need enough Styrofoam cups and tongue depressors for the entire class, along with a pair of scissors and some paste. You will also need red, yellow, green and brown construction paper. First, cut a slit in the bottom of each cup, wide enough for a tongue depressor to slip through. Have each student draw a bear on brown construction paper. Then, have them tear slips of each color paper to use as leaves. Help each student cut out her bear and paste it to the end of a tongue depressor. Then help them paste leaves onto the outsides of their cup-caves. Finally, help the children put the free end of the tongue depressors into the caves, and through the slits. From the back of the cup they can push and pull the tongue depressors to make their bears go in and out of their caves.