Two gorgeous magnet rhymes about teddy bears that are fun to sing at mat time or any time when bears are being explored by the children in your early childhood curriculum.

Includes:

• 5 Teddy Bears & My Teddy Rhyme Card
• 5 Teddy Bears

Facts about the Teddy Bear

• In 18A0, Margarete Steiff invented the first stuffed toy bear in Giengen, Germany. As a young girl, Margarete was stricken with polio and spent her life in a wheelchair. She enjoyed making toys and eventually started a toy factory. In 1902, the first “teddy bear” was created.
• The teddy bear was named after the 26th president of the United States, Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt when a cartoon appeared in newspapers with Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear on a hunting trip in 1902. “I don’t think my name is likely to be worth much in the toy business, but you are welcome to use it.” Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, 1903.
• In 1903, Morris and Rose Michtom sold the first teddy bear in their candy shop in Brooklyn, New York. With help from a large company called Butler Brothers, the Michtoms opened a company called the Ideal Novelty Toy Company.
• Around the same time, Margarete’s company in Germany called Steiff was introducing its toy bear at Leipzig Toy Fair. A company in the U.S. ordered 3,000 Steiff bears. By the end of that year, the order had increased to 12,000 bears!
• Recently, a 14" Steiff, 1927 Pesty the Bear Baby sold at an online auction for $10,288. He is a rare example of a precursor bear and was supposedly not put into a series production.
• The Ideal Novelty and Toy Company, which was, at one time, the largest bear factory in the United States remains one of the biggest toy companies in the world today, over ninety years later.
• In 1904, Teddy Roosevelt changed his campaign mascot from a moose to a bear and used the popular song The Teddy Bears’ Picnic as his re-election theme song. President Roosevelt won a second term in office from 1905-1909.
• Between 1906-1907, Seymour Eaton writes the first known published books featuring teddy bears entitled, The Roosevelt Bears, their Travels and Adventures.
• In 1907, the Steiff Company sold over 1,000,000 toys (974,000 were toy bears). Steiff declared it the year of the bear! —Barenjahre