* Share the story with the children and ask them to make up some more countryside characters and give them names. Would these characters be friends of Dol and the bat? Would they also hibernate during the winter?
* Teach children the hibernation action rhyme on the back of the Nursery Topics poster and play the game.
* Use the theme of helping friends asa focus for circle time. Can the children think of ways in which they can help their friends?
* Challenge children to build a hibernation den. How would theymake it warm and safe from predators and the weather? What would it be like to spend the winter in the den? What would they want to take into the den with them?
* Look at foods eaten by different animals and talk about how they store up food and fat on their bodies to keep warm during hibernation. Talk about the foods we eat to keep warm in the winter. Make soup or jacket potatoes with the children. What foods will be available for animals when they wake up in the spring?
* Explore hibernation through movement. Ask children to curl up tightly and then slowly wake up from their long winter's sleep, stretching and then hopping and jumping in an open space as spring arrives.
* Talk about how we respond to changes in temperature by looking at winter and summer clothes and ways of heating our houses.
* Talk about migration and discuss weather conditions in other parts of the world. Show children on a globe where we live and the routes taken by migrating birds to their destinations.
