Write a bear's to-do list for the first day of spring, in the order a hungry bear would put it.Angle: eat is on the list more than once. What is the one thing that is not about food?
The first meal of spring is not much: new grass and green shoots. Write a hungry bear's opinion of salad.Fact: in northern places bears browse and graze on plants mostly in early spring.
Lunch is under a log, and a bear rolls it over. Write the moment from the underside of the log.Fact: bears use their strong front legs to turn over rocks and logs and to dig out food.
A black bear climbs an oak for acorns and finds a squirrel already there. Write the conversation.Fact: in fall one black bear may eat acorns and nuts by the hundreds a day, and raid squirrels' stores.
A black bear has an ant nest for a snack. Write the ants' newspaper headline and the first paragraph.Fact: most of the animal food a black bear eats is insects, such as ants, beetles and their larvae.
A friend thinks bears live on honey. Write the bear's own correction, with what it really ate this week.Fact: bears that raid bees' nests eat the honey and the young insects too; most of their food is plants.
A giant panda eats almost nothing but plants. Write its dinner with a brown bear who eats everything.Fact: the giant panda is a bear that eats almost only plants; most bears eat plants and animals.
A young bear has to learn which plants are ready to eat. Write a lesson that goes wrong in a harmless way.Fact: a bear has to learn when each plant is ripe enough to eat.
Brown bears crowd a river when the salmon are running. Write the river from a gull's point of view.Fact: fish are an important food for some bears, and brown bears gather in numbers at salmon runs.
Following its nose, a bear walks toward something delicious a long way off. Write the walk, smell by smell.Fact: a bear's sense of smell is better than a dog's, Wikipedia's bear article says.
It is fall and a brown bear has one job: eat. Write an hour of it, mouthful by mouthful.Fact: in fall a brown bear hardly stops eating, National Geographic Kids says.
Lunch is under a log, and a bear rolls it over. Write the moment from the underside of the log.Fact: bears use their strong front legs to turn over rocks and logs and to dig out food.
On a hillside of berries, a bear picks only the ripest by their color. Write the choosing, bush by bush.Fact: bears have color vision, perhaps to help them tell ripe nuts and fruits apart.
Two bears arrive at the same berry patch. Write how they share it, or do not, without a fight.Fact: bears mostly live alone and are seen in groups only where food is rich, as at a salmon run.
Write a bear's menu for one whole year, season by season.Fact: most bears eat more plants than meat and take whatever food the season brings.
Write a bear's shopping list for a forest that has no shops.Angle: where is each thing found, and which one is ripe for only a week?
Write a poem of five lines, one for each thing a bear ate today, smallest first.Angle: an ant, a berry, a root, a fish. Choose the fifth and make it the surprise.
Write a restaurant review by a bear who has just eaten at a berry patch.Angle: service, portions, other customers. Give it stars out of five and one complaint.
First day of spring 15
A bear steps out of its den on the first warm day of spring. Write the first ten steps.Angle: stiff legs, bright light, a smell it has not met in months. Which comes first?
A hiker finds a bear's fresh tracks in the last patch of snow. Write what the tracks tell her, and why she turns back.Angle: size, direction, how fresh. She reads three things and makes one sensible choice.
A male black bear has been out for weeks when the first mother appears with her cubs. Write what he thinks of the noise.Fact: male black bears exit their dens about mid-March; females with newborns stay a little longer.
The first meal of spring is not much: new grass and green shoots. Write a hungry bear's opinion of salad.Fact: in northern places bears browse and graze on plants mostly in early spring.
For the first time since fall, a bear rubs its back on its favorite tree. Write the tree's side.Fact: bears leave their scent by rubbing against trees, usually clawing and biting the bark as well.
On the first day of spring a bear meets the fox it last saw in the fall. Write them catching up.First line: "You missed a lot." "I missed all of it. Start from the snow."
Over the winter one thing in the forest changed, and a bear finds it on its first spring walk. Write what the bear does.Angle: a fallen tree, a new stream, a fence. Keep it small enough to walk around.
Spring is late, and snow still lies on the ground when a bear comes out. Write its plan.Angle: go back to bed, or make do? Give it one good idea and one bad one.
Spring means losing a shaggy winter coat. Write a bear's week of itching, rubbing and looking a mess.Fact: in spring a bear sheds its shaggy winter coat for a shorter summer one.
The stream is running again. Write a bear's first drink and first swim of the year.Fact: for all their heavy build, bears are adept runners, climbers and swimmers.
Up on its hind legs, a bear looks over the new spring grass. Write what it is checking for.Fact: a bear balances well enough to stand on its hind feet or sit upright.
Write a bear's to-do list for the first day of spring, in the order a hungry bear would put it.Angle: eat is on the list more than once. What is the one thing that is not about food?
Write a letter from a bear to the winter, saying what it thinks it missed.Angle: snow it never saw, a frozen lake, the quiet. Is the bear sorry or relieved?
Write a spring morning in the forest as a list of sounds, ending with the one that means the bear is awake.Angle: drip, creak, birdsong. Save the heaviest sound for last.
Write the first day of spring as the bear's den sees it: suddenly empty.First line: For months I held one large secret, and this morning it got up and left.
A bear in town 15
A bear and a town dog see each other through a fence. Write the thirty seconds before the bear ambles off.Angle: the dog is all noise and the bear is all patience. Which of them tells it better?
A bear walks down the main street at five in the morning. Write what it makes of the town.Angle: mailboxes, parked cars, a sprinkler. Describe each as a bear would understand it.
A bear's muddy paw print dries on the side of a parked delivery van. Write the driver's day of explaining it.Angle: every customer has a theory. Which stop finally gets the true story?
A family watches from the kitchen window as a bear inspects the trash cans at midnight. Write the whispering.Fact: black bears that live near people tend to be active mostly at night.
A town holds a meeting about the bear that keeps visiting. Write three people's speeches.Angle: one is afraid, one is charmed, one has a practical idea about trash cans.
A wildlife officer is called about a bear up a backyard tree. Write her calm morning's work.Fact: black bears regularly climb trees to feed and to escape enemies.
At dusk a bear crosses a golf course. Write what the last two golfers do, and what the bear thinks the flags are for.Angle: the golfers stay well back. The bear has a theory about the little holes.
The bear in town only wants to get back to the woods. Write its search for the way out.Angle: every street looks the same. What smell finally points the way?
Before dawn a bear looks in at a bakery window. Write the story as the baker tells it for years afterward.First line: I had the first tray out when the window went dark.
From the bear's side, write why a town smells better than a forest on trash night.Angle: list the smells in order, from the first whiff at the forest edge to the lid itself.
The park is closed for the afternoon because a bear is napping under the bandstand. Write the town's whispering.First line: By noon the whole town knew, and the whole town was whispering.
Should a town change its habits because bears live nearby? Write your opinion and your reasons.Angle: think of trash cans, bird feeders and fruit trees. Who should do what, and who decides?
Write a newspaper report of a bear's walk through town in which no person and no bear comes to any harm.Angle: who, what, where, when. Quote one witness who watched from indoors.
Write a town's messages to each other on the morning a bear is seen near the park.Angle: ten messages. One is helpful, one is a joke, one asks the wrong question.
Write the sign a town puts up at the edge of the woods, and the sign a bear would put up facing the other way.Angle: each sign has one rule and one warning. Keep each under twenty words.
Cubs 15
A bear cub copies its mother digging and gets it wrong in its own way. Write the lesson.Angle: she digs for roots. What does the cub dig up instead, and is it pleased?
A bear cub leaves the den for the first time and sees the sky. Write what it thinks the sky is.Fact: by two to three months old, bear cubs can trail their mother out of the den.
A mother bear sends her cubs up a tree, and one cub picks a tree that is far too thin. Write the slow bend.Angle: the sapling leans, gently, until the cub is back on the ground. Who is watching?
A young bear, newly on its own, catches its first fish and has nobody to show. Write the moment.Angle: pride with no audience. Who or what does it show the fish to anyway?
Before its eyes open, a newborn bear cub knows the world by warmth, smell and sound. Write that world.Fact: bear cubs are born blind and helpless and rely on their mother for warmth.
Chasing a butterfly, a bear cub wanders off and has to be found. Write the search from the mother's nose.Fact: bears use their sense of smell to find food and to recognize their own cubs.
The cubs have followed their mother through every season, and now it is time to go. Write the last day together.Fact: black bear cubs spend one to three years with their mother, who teaches them.
On one walk, a bear cub asks its mother question after question. Write the best five and her answers.Angle: she answers four. The fifth she answers by showing, not telling.
One bear cub is bold and one is careful. Write a day that proves each of them right once.Angle: one moment for the bold cub, one for the careful one. Their mother sees both.
Two bear cubs are sent up a tree while their mother looks for food. Write their talk on the branch.Fact: black bears are excellent tree climbers and even sleep in trees during the summer.
Write a bear cub's first swimming lesson, given by a mother who explains nothing.Fact: black bears are excellent swimmers, good for a mile and a half or more in fresh water.
Write a game that two bear cubs invent with a pine cone, and its rules, which keep changing.First line: Rule one was that the pine cone was lava. Rule two was that it was not.
Write a letter from a full-grown black bear to the tiny cub it once was.Fact: black bear cubs weigh under a pound at birth and add 20 to 30 pounds in three months.
Write the argument between two bear cubs over who gets to walk right behind their mother.First line: "Second is mine. I called it before we woke up."
Write the bedtime story a mother bear tells her cubs about the year she was the smallest of three.Angle: the cubs have heard it before and correct her. Which part do they ask for twice?
How it works
These bear writing prompts follow one hungry animal around its year: a berry patch reviewed like a restaurant, the first stiff steps out of the den, a town seen at five in the morning, a cub's first sky.
Read the full guide
What bears really eat
Mostly plants. Wikipedia's bear article says most bears eat more plant than animal food and take whatever the season offers: young plants in early spring, then berries, acorns and fish. Bears see in color, perhaps to tell ripe fruit from unripe. Twelve of the fifteen menu prompts carry a fact like these.
When a bear comes to town
Fifteen prompts bring a bear into town, and all of them keep people at a distance: a family at the kitchen window, a baker behind glass, a wildlife officer doing her job. The bear is curious or lost, never fierce.
Questions and answers
What is a good bear writing prompt?
One that starts with an appetite. Write a bear's to-do list for the first day of spring, in the order a hungry bear would put it. Eat will be on it more than once.
Do bears really love honey?
Some do raid bees' nests, Wikipedia's bear article says, for the honey and for the young insects inside. Insects are most of the animal food a black bear eats: ants, beetles and their larvae.
When do bear cubs leave their mother?
Black bear cubs spend one to three years with their mother, learning from her to live in the wild, National Geographic Kids says. One prompt asks for the last day together.
Are these bear writing prompts for kids?
Yes. No bear chases anyone, and nobody in a prompt feeds a bear or goes near one. The town prompts are told from a kitchen window, a bakery and a parked van.