I Survived the Attack of the Grizzilies, 1967 *** Grizzly Bear Relay Race


This is the relay race played during our I Survived book club meeting for I Survived the Attack of the Grizzlies, 1967. A thorough (ish) overview of that months meeting can be found here 😁

In the book, two teenage girls are attacked by two grizzly bears on the very same night at Glacier National Park. Prior to this, no one believed bears capable of such violence. Rangers theorize that these attacks were encouraged by park employees and visitors baiting bears, leaving trash and feeding bears from cabin porches.

In this game, groups are gathering food that bears find naturally in the wild . Here goes...

Objective: Gather the most food items to bring back to your teams table aka "cave".
How To Play: Each team was given a single pair of "bear claws" (wide tooth combs from Dollar Tree). Playing tag team style, players use bear claws to gather food items to bring back to team table. Food items were: moths (Styrofoam balls), meat (beanbags), berries (pom pom balls). Any items that fall on the way to the "cave" does not count and must remain on the floor.

The table contents are hard to see in this picture, but there were 3 separate tables with the different foods on them.

When all food items have been picked from the table, whichever group has the most amount of items wins.

Each team had their own table to dump their food after retrieval.

Preparation: Prep work involved collecting items and assigning names to them.
Grizzly bears primarily eat plants (berries, roots, grasses, leaves), meat (moose, caribou calves, squirrels, fish) and even moths. These were the items I settled on..

Berries - I picked out all the blue and purple pom poms.

Meat - Shark bean bags were from left over from our shark attack I Survived meeting, hearts were in our supply and I quickly stitched together some deer heads together.
Moths - You read this article, right?
For a different element, players could opt out of gathering meat and berries with their claws and attempt to throw a moth into the bears mouth during their turn instead.

Players stood behind a taped line to throw. These were worth double points at the end.
Here's the bear I made. It was printed out, colored and attached to cardboard. The mouth was cut out and a gallon sized plastic bag was stapled to it - this was to know what balls made it into the bears mouth. Cardboard was given legs to help it stand. 

Each team had a different bear to toss moths into. Team bears were differentiated by different colored eyes, e.i. the green teams bear had green eyes.

And that's basically the gist of it! I'm a little distracted typing this up so I probably shouldn't publish this. ... I'll make a note to re-read this later.


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I Survived The Attack of the Grizzlies, 1967



 I feel like it's becoming a habit that I accidentally give away all my copies of a book we're reading and then end up walking into book club never having gotten my hands on another copy!

For discussion, activity/craft and snack ideas, I rely heavily on the book for guidance and inspiration. But with these grizzlies, I was flying blind.

One thing that I tell the kids who come up to the desk and ask about our book club is that if you can't get the book to read in time, just read about the event! You'll still have something to share in our discussion and you will still have an idea of the what the book will be based on.

This book however, apparently didn't have much to do with the two girls who were attacked and killed on the night of August 12, 1967.

DISCUSSION
After the group shared their favorite/ least favorite parts from the story, I shared the actual events of that night. Boy was I glad I'd printed off my notes!!

What struck me about this story is the coincidences and chance that came into play that night... In 57 years of Glacier Park history, there had been virtually no issues with bear attacks.

One of my favorite quotes in my research was a from a park ranger stating that, "If you set up a danger index ranging from zero to ten, where the butterfly is zero and the rattlesnake is ten, the grizzlies of Glacier Park would have to rate somewhere between zero and one."

Like I Survived The Shark Attack of  1916, this book does have specific, real-life individuals who were killed.

I printed off their pictures to pass around and we talked briefly about each girl: Julie Helgeson and Michele Koons.



Other discussion topics included... 
  • How Glacier National Park desensitized interaction between bears and humans
  • How parks have changed to become safer for visitors and wildlife
  • Bear facts including food, size and habits
  • Interacting with wildlife and what to do in a bear attack


SNACKS
Providing the snack that's mentioned in the book is one of my favorite elements of book club! I feel like it helps bring the to life and the kids have caught on to it, so when I didn't have Bugles, they questioned me.

(Bugles are apparently in the book)

As seen in the main picture, we had Teddy Grahams and berry Fruit Snacks. These were wrapped in pictures of Grizzly Bears.

Another idea was gummy bears.


ACTIVITY
There were a few ideas I was playing around with to tie-in with the 1967 event...
  • Picking up trash around the library (since that's what was attracting the bears to campsites and such)
  • A bear hunt (Park Rangers went out hunting the bears after the attacks) 
  • Bear craft (Pinterest is riddled with adorable crafts)
  • Some kind of edible bear snack. One thing in particular that I would love to do (but could never get permission for) is making smores with a candle flame. My mom and I used to do this all the time at home, growing up.

What we ended up doing was a relay race to collect food for bears. Participants were divided into teams and given "bear claws" to collect their food and carry back to their "den"
    This relay game will get its own post, so sit tight while I get that situated! It'll be up in the next few weeks.


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    YA Fiction Read-A-Likes


    A very short list of books that went out on our YA Read-Alike book display. A fair number of titles have been paired with a movie/tv series.


     If I'm Being Honest by Emily Wibberley 

    This has been on my tbr list for too long!

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      We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

    (Find a copy of the audiobook. The print format is distracting)

    Little Monsters by Kara Thomas

     




    I Am Princess X by Cherie Priest

    Great for middle grade readers. 
    A no romance YA novel 
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    With Malice by Eileen Cook


    Sky In The Deep by Adrienne Young

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    Warrior of the Wild by Tricia Levenseller
    Immoral Code by Lillian Clark

    Antisocial by Jilian Blake

    Renegades by Marissa Meyer

    Action, anti-heroes and so many super powers!

    The Supervillain and Me by Danielle Banas

    This was a one-sitting read for me and if I could re-read it for the first time, I would. 
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    Warcross by Marie Lu

    An exciting duology. Find the audiobook - Nancy Wu is amazing.

    Otherworld by Jason Segel & Kirsten Miller



    Mammoth by Jill Bagunchinsky

    The most accurate writing that explores teen logic, insecurities and the emotional journey of those infamous adolescent years.  


    And We Stay by Jenny Hubbard

    Cut by Patricia McCormick

    This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

    A very harrowing book, set in Alabama.


    Brave Enough by Kati Gardner
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    Me, Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews


    How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon

    Dear Martin by Nic Stone

    Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott

    The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon


    Satellite by Nick Lake

    Moon Beam by Travis Taylor


    Matched by Ally Condie
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    Delirium by Lauren Oliver
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    The Jewel by Amy Ewing
    Grittier than anticipated. If you enjoy this one, you might also like The Glass Arrow by Kristen Simmons


    Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

    Heart warming or heartbreaking... I can't decide. 

    Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli


    Amid Stars and Darkness by Chani Lynn Feener
     Swoon Reads might be my new favorite publication 😘










    These titles were used in a YA Read-alikes book display.

    For the display, I printed off little flyer/sign things and rubber-banded them to the cover of each book.

    I'm not going to attach my PDF since it's so basic and the chances of you having all these books is slim.

    Use this as inspiration though! Take what you want from my post and leave the rest :)

    If you have any amazing recommendations to share with me to add, I'd love to hear them.


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