Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You See

How to Actually Teach the "Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You See" Game to Kids

I've run this activity probably a hundred times across preschools, classroom volunteer days, and summer camp sessions. It looks dead simple on paper. The song is short, the movement is easy, and kids love the animal call-and-response part. But there are a few practical details that make or break it, and most adults skip straight past them because they've only played it once as children. The core mechanic is straightforward. One kid stands in the middle as the polar bear. The rest form a circle holding hands. The polar bear asks, "Polar bear, polar bear, what do you see?" and the circle responds with an animal. Then everyone shouts the color associated with that animal and runs in the matching direction. If you're doing this with a group that hasn't done it before, you'll want to write the color-direction mapping on a whiteboard or piece of paper first. Kids tend to second-guess whether green means "jump" or "turn around" on the fly, and that hesitation kills the energy in the room.

Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You See

Here's the full animal and color chart I always keep taped to my clipboard: Lion — Roar and move like a lion
Tiger — Show your stripes
Zebra — Stomp your feet
Monkey — Scratch your armpits
Frog — Jump like a frog
Bird — Flap your wings
Snake — Hiss and wiggle
Elephant — Swing your trunk The original version uses colors instead of actions for the response. Each animal is paired with a color, and kids run to that color cone or marked area on the floor. Lion is red. Tiger is orange. Zebra is black and white, which is where it gets tricky because you can't really mark two colors at once. I solved this by just saying "zebra means stand still and strike a pose" instead of having them run anywhere. It cuts down the confusion without removing the fun part.

My biggest headache with this game happened when I had a mixed-age group, maybe four to seven years old. The younger ones would freeze when called on and refuse to do the animal motion. The older ones would get impatient and shout the answer instead of waiting. What I ended up doing was splitting them into two circles — the younger kids stayed in the center for the first few rounds while the older kids formed the outer ring and answered for them. Once the shy kids saw the older ones model the motions, they'd join in willingly. It wasn't in the original instructions, but it works. Another thing nobody tells you: the pacing matters way more than the song itself. If you let the polar bear rotate after every single question, the game drags. Half the kids lose focus because they've been standing still too long. I keep the same polar bear for three or four rounds before swapping, and I only rotate when the current kid successfully tags someone or when the group seems restless. That small adjustment keeps the whole thing moving at a pace where kids stay engaged instead of checking out. The song lyrics themselves have a lot of regional variations. Some versions include "with my eye eye open" at the end. Others swap in different animals or add colors like purple for octopus. None of these variations are wrong. Pick one set of rules and stick with it for the session. Switching mid-game just confuses everyone, and you'll spend five minutes explaining why the zebra suddenly means "run to blue" instead of whatever it meant five minutes ago.

For downloading printable materials, a few sites host free PDF versions of the full game sheet with colored animal cards you can print and cut out. Search for "polar bear polar bear what do you see printable" and you'll find options from education sites like Education.com, Super Simple Songs, and various teacher blogs. I usually print the animal cards double-sided so they last through multiple sessions, and I laminate them with contact paper if the group is rough on paper. It takes about twenty minutes of prep and saves you from having to rewrite the chart every time. The main limitation of this game is space. You need a clear area where kids can safely run in different directions without bumping into furniture or each other. A typical classroom with desks pushed to the walls gives you about six feet of clearance in each direction, which is fine for a small group of eight to ten kids but falls apart quickly once you hit fifteen. If you're working with a larger group, split into two circles in different corners of the room and run them simultaneously. They won't interfere with each other and you effectively double your capacity without needing more space. It also doesn't work well for kids who have mobility issues that make running problematic. I've had to adapt by letting those kids be the "judge" who calls out the animals instead, which keeps them involved without putting them in a position where they feel left out. Some groups I've worked with just modify the movement — instead of running to a color, they point or step toward it. The game is flexible enough that this doesn't break anything.

One counter-intuitive detail: the person in the center actually has less fun than the people in the circle when they're new to the game. Being the polar bear means you have to remember the lyrics, think of an animal on the spot, and manage the whole flow. Kids who volunteer for that role often get overwhelmed after two rounds and refuse to go back. I address this by having the adult lead the first round while the kids watch, then rotating quickly so no single kid carries that burden for too long. After they've seen it worked once, they're much more willing to try. The game runs about fifteen to twenty minutes before attention drops off significantly. Pushing it past that point usually means kids are just going through the motions, which defeats the purpose. Better to stop while it's still fun and come back to it later than to stretch it out until everyone is bored and restless.