The teddy bear- charming, loyal and cuddly- is probably one of the most enduring treasures of childhood. First produced in 1902 in Germany by Steiff, he (the bear) was designed as the boy’s alternative to the doll. “Friend Petz” was accepted because of his loving and sincere characteristics.
Almost at the same time a teddy bear was created in America and gained popularity there as well.
The teddy bear was named after “Teddy”- Theodore Roosevelt who was the 26th President of the United States.

The Comforting Teddy Bear

Various professionals depend upon the ability of the teddy bear to lend an air of warmth and security to an intimidating situation.
Doctors rely upon teddies for explaining, reassuring or comforting children; deaf children can often be reached by sign language when it is conveyed through a teddy bear.
Many parents can recall using the teddy bear to help their small children overcome a seemingly unsolvable problem for instants a temper tantrum.
I used a teddy, with my unrecognisable voice, to speak to my daughter who woke up at night screaming. Teddy’s talking made her listening & laugh and she quite happily went back to sleep.

The power of the teddy bear to comfort often lasts  beyond childhood and is reflected in the mascot or talisman that  goes everywhere with his owner, providing moral support during examination or rallies athletes’ to higher level of play.
Quiet often we give a teddy bear as a first gift to someone we have fallen in love with.

The Relationship

The relationship between teddy bears and their owners is reciprocal; people take care of their bears but feel that their bears take care of them. The bond between owner and bear begins when the teddy was first received and lasts through all ups and downs of their owner’s life. Those teddy bears are often been passed on to children, grandchildren or close friends.
Well loved and  far travelled teddy bears end up with us at Bear Essentials Teddy Bear Hospital to be restored and t be fit to last another life time. Some bears are over 50 years old. Some are almost beyond repair but still with a bit of new material and with keeping some of his old, charming features they all get a new lease of life.

The Collector Teddy Bear

Collectors recognize the classic teddy bear by its well-defined features, unique personality and quality of construction.
Bears made from antique plush or mohair with high grade felt, velvet or suede paws are among the most valued. Jointed legs, arms and head are also important.
Black boot-button eyes are hallmarks of the classic teddy bear as well as the embroidered black nose & mouth.
The stuffing should be also of high quality pellets, superfine wood wool, sheep wool or kapok (a natural material from a kapok tree).
Some bears have been given voices through the installation of a growling mechanism.

Who would have thought that the craze for teddy bears would be as popular today or even more fashionable as it was over 100 years ago?

Nowadays you not only have the choice to purchase a teddy bear from a companies or shop but be fortunate to pick up your own personalized teddy bear by a private Bear Artist. This bear might be completed as a small limited edition or even a one-off limited edition that is just looking for you.

All of Anke’s teddy bears are one off limited editions, but some belong to special collections who are similar in design for example “Lakeland Bears” or “Little Rascals”.

To all our readers we like you to bear in mind that each teddy bear takes on his own identity from the artist who created him and who trusts that the bear be valued for his unique design, the quality of materials and its potential to becoming a lifetime friend for its owner.

Last week we had 4 International Rural Tourism delegates from 3 countries (Netherland, Bulgaria & Germany) visiting Ireland for a couple of days to work on an international accredited Train the Trainer Course.

From Ireland John Tolan of CMRD, Noelle CMRD and from Athlone Institute Kevin Mc Loughlin had organised the event. The international group is working under the Leonardo da Vinci Partnership.

We facilitated the one day event in the Silver Bear Centre. While I was involved in delivering a hands-on workshop on Entrepreneurship and Train the Trainer core competencies in the morning, the afternoon got us all working hard on the different levels involved to achieve accreditation.

Kevin delivered an inside how it works here in Ireland and what needs to be done to get it approved.

Through activities and lots & lots of discussions I learned a bit more about the status in other countries and the different needs regarding rural tourism and especially rural tourism training.

We like to thank everyone, especially our visitors to Ireland for their valuable and active input all day.

It was great meeting you and we wish you great success.

Thanks for visiting Bear Essentials in the neck of the woods.

Here are Carolien, Paula, Desi and Boris links to rural & Eco tourism.

• Netherland
  
• Germany
• Bulgaria

Read more on the Ruraltourisminternational Blog>>>

To design teddy bears and creating their own characters is just one way of expressing our creativity. Like an artist painting a picture or a potter building a vase it gives us the opportunity to invent, to form, to produce something new and unique. The innovative product is our reward and for me as a teddy bear artist the prize is that people like my creations and buy and collect them.

But a real thrill for me is when other people can experience the same then I do.

It is great when you can pass on your skills to people and it is exciting if they give you fine feed back on their experience.

A mum who took part in a course with her daughter wrote back to us with words like “We were impressed with our efforts” – “We were trilled and chuffed and didn’t think we had the confidence and skills to do such a great job.” Isn’t life to be there to experience it in full? To be able to do so we have to learn all the time and at all stages of our life.

This little girls is not even 6 years of age and embroidering her newly made teddy bears nose. And the boys get really enthusiastic about sewing. The ladies in the button picture show off their bears at a course I delivered in An Grianan in Co.Louth this August 2009.

Did students, teacher & artist enjoy the project? Yes  we all enjoyed it very much. But it certainly was not effortless.

Students: The boys enjoyed it very much and are proud of their collective achievements.
Teacher: Enjoyed the project but did not realised how much work was involved. She thought that we did a lot of cross curricular work which was very beneficial.
Artist: Very much so. It was a lot more work than I thought.

Would we do it again? Yes of course we would!!!
I personally think that art & crafts projects are a very pleasurable, efficient and  creative way to teach children about the interdependence of different school subjects. It also opens the possibility to learn in a child friendly way expressing the children’s own feelings and challenge their own abilities.

Did we achieve our aims?

Our aim for the whole project were

• Everyone is getting involved
• Everyone is learning new skills
• Widen our knowledge
• Create awareness
• Learn about ourselves
• Benefit  to be part of a collective project
• See ourselves as part of a bigger picture
• Explore>>>

Yes everyone got involved. Even so it was sometimes difficult to give everyone the same opportunity. But because there were so many elements to the whole project all got involved and everyone made a booklet, a clay bear and a little polar bear for themselves as well.

All learned hand sewing skills, emphasis on helping each other. Everyone had a go on the sewing machine. Writing & drawing skills, Skills in how to make a simple booklet. Boys loved the sewing especially the sewing machine!

• The boys got knowledge about fabric, stuffing material, about bears, about people & bears and the environment, knowledge about recycling.
• Knowledge about the different countries that bears are living in.
• Knowledge of filming a video.

We created awareness

• Of global warming
• Especially awareness about WWF and polar bears and endangered species
• Awareness that we as people, countries and worldwide nations have to do something about it.
• Power, opportunities  & influence of IT and our presents in setting up our own blog at http://saintpatricksschool.wordpress.com
• I think we learned a lot about ourselves and how we interact within a group. I thought the boys were very good in telling us if someone was upset or needed help and were also helping each other out all the time. They were all very excited about the project days.
• We have seen that we are part of a much larger, worldwide environment and have to connect with other nations to work on the same goals.

What would we change or approach in a different way next time?

Even so we worked on a collective project it was quite important to the boys to have something to take home themselves.
We did far too much a very short time. I would have put a few hours in afterwards in my own workshop and also worked on the documentation. It also created a lot of extra work for the teacher. Next time I would just work on a smaller scale.

Sometimes boys were waiting to do something when it was not there turn.
It would have been better to keep them busy all the time which means more communication between teacher and artist.
We had just one sewing machine working on the day. To give the boys a longer lesson on it we needed two.

There are many spin off opportunities like to learn the history about bears in Ireland, bears in the Irish language. Stories about bears.

Connection to schools in other countries like Alaska where people have to live together and respect bears in the wild. Bear sculptures of the North American Indian>>>

We just touched on filming small videos and one big downfall is that we not managed to add those to our blog yet.

We encountered a huge problem regarding our blog  at the beginning.

I already had set up a blog when we realized it was not accessible through the school. By the time I had set up a second blog we knew there was no way we were able to get into it because of the schools filtering system. This was quite a blow for me because I really wanted the boys to be in charge of the IT part of the project.

It also meant a lot of extra out of project hours work to put on the text the boys had written and the teacher had to encourage them to go online at home with their parents and add comments.

It was all worthwhile in the end. It was about crafts in the classroom an art project filed with creativity, fun and skillful work. Well done boys! You can be very proud of yourself.

not finished yet

We almost pieced everything together but we wanted some time for a  game at the end of the session. Next week is going to be the end of the project and we are going to invite another class room to join us to celebrate our achievements.

I put different bear masks on the table and the boys were working in teams. I was reading out questions like ” I love to eat bamboo” or “Iam the smallest bear of all the bear species” and who knew the answer had to put the mask on his head and tell us what bear are we talking about.

The group with the most answers is going to do a little presentation to our visitors next week.

As you know we also adopted a polar bear for a year through WWF. As part of our celebration every boy is going to make a polar bear for themselves next week. At least they have something to take home with them and something to keep.

Next week you can see our finished project which will be added as a custom header to the boys blog.

View here>>>

Yes that is the tittle of our project agreed by majority vote. Other tittles where ” Blizzard the king of the Arctic” or “Save the Arctic”. I personally think that this project tittle communicates the whole project very well.

drawing shape of an ice floe

Today we were trying to put all the different pieces together. To be able to do this we had to work on our ice floe first. Some boys were involved in the drawing. A lot of them were active in the cutting. And others covered the ice floe with material.

The use of more dangerous tools like the knife and sharp nails caused a larger attraction for the boys and everyone wanted to try it.

cutting our ice floe

Another group was working with Caitriona covering another piece with hand dyed silk fabric – our arctic water. The next stage was to decide how to attach all the  friendship bears. They are going to form a circle around the ice because that is was they are trying to protect. Read next article to view what else we did today.

Caitriona working with the boys

we cover it with white material

One of the boys is working on Blizzard’s nose. He is using black thread and a large doll makers needle to embroider the nose.

At the beginning of our project we agreed special terms with the boys how to use and behave when applying more dangerous tools in school then usually. One of the conditions where that everyone using a needle had to sit down. We also agreed on sanctions for not keeping to our terms.

Sounds strict but when working with 23 boys in a classroom environment, on a project that requires a lot of skills but at the same you like to experience every child to develop those skills, safety is very important.

Everyone had a go with Blizzard. Some of the boys were stuffing his legs while others where working on his head. At the end of the session we joint all the parts up with his body. A bonus was the growler we inserted in his body. Some boys thought he sounded more like a cow then a bear.

The boys where also personalising their little friendship bears. When I arrived everyone had made a flag of the country their bear is symbolising. We are going to leave the flags until the end to see where they best fit into the whole project. The boys added a lot of different attributes to their bears like, scarves, medals, hair and a class eye for the pirate.

When I came home I took a picture of all the friendship bears (we have attached them to each other) with Blizzard in the middle.

Blizzard is made from material of an old coat. The friendship bears are from material the boys brought in. Imagine what you can recycle and turn into new use or into art & craft ideas.

At Bear Essentials Summer School in July we are planning to make designer bags from strong fiber material ( read more )

We had lots of fun today. We have two more sessions left to finish our project. We will share the result with you. For this week the boys have to come up with a tittle for the project.

Today was my third day working with the boys on our polar bear project. We were working on our polar bear as well as creating friendship bears.
We had a bit of news today because Gulliver the travel ted came to visit and he is going to stay for a week with the boys in school.

I also brought the parcel in from WWF regarding our polar bear adoption. Besides a little polar plush bear it contains information and a certificate & letter for the boys and it also has information about the polar bear they adopted.

It was a coincident that I read an article in the National Geographic Magazine-April issue-this weekend about the Svalbard ecosystem on Svalbard Island in Norway. The boys have adopted one of five polar bears on Svalbard Island and did a vital part towards  conservation. Well done boys!!!

Today we sewed little friendship bears. The boys had to fill them with stuffing material and embroidered the eyes and nose. They also sewed their bears up. We encouraged the boys to think about a county that their bear should represent. Because countries have to agree to come together in friendship to look  after the worlds heritage & environment .

One of the boys made a pirate bear because he had heard in the news about the Somali  pirates… They are going to make flags for the bears and we are hoping to join all bears together holding hands in a circle representing different countries of  the world.
The boys were also taking turn on working on our polar bear. They were stuffing the head and legs. We are going to put him together next week. His nose needs to be embroidered and all the joints have to go in to make him movable. Next week we are hoping to work on an ice flow for him to sit on.

Here some images of our work today.

Friendship Bears made of material the   boys brought in.

Four legs of our polar bear.

Stuffing our friendship bears.

The boys came up with a name for our polar bear today. He is going to be called Blizzard.

Gulliver the travel ted found lots of Easter eggs at Bear Essentials Easter school.

He also met a puppy that turned up here at Easter.
Today I took him to St.Patrick’s Boys National School to meet the class I am working with.

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