Ten in the Bed

When I was a child I remember my family snuggling in my mom  and dad's bed and playing this game.  We would say, "There were 5 in the bed and the little one said, 'Roll over'".  Slowly but surely each family member would roll out of the bed until finally only one remained.  It is such a fond memory, that I enjoy sharing this song with my preschoolers as often as I can.
These are little dolls that I made using colored clothes pins.  I simply drew on a face and glued on some yarn for hair.  I used a small piece of extra material for a blanket to cover them up.  As we sang the song as a class, each child had a chance to come up and roll one of the dolls out of bed.  They loved it and these little clothes pins were just prefect for rolling!

After several readings of the book Ten in the Bed we also took an opportunity to act out the story with our classmates.  The children all snuggled up under a quilt that I brought from home and slowly but surely they rolled out of the "bed" until the final child said, "goodnight."  It is a hit for sure!

As a part of our Night-time theme we also enjoyed several readings and activities with the Five Little Monkeys books by Eileen Cristalow.  The activity below was a class favorite!  We used a small basket with a picture of a bed and small monkey finger puppets to "bounce" while we repeated the rhyme.  At the end of the rhyme the child would give the basket an extra "bounce" and see how many monkeys fell out of the bed.  It was a great opportunity to squeeze in some math concepts by discussing how many monkeys remained in the bed.

At the end of the week, our speech therapist came in and did more "monkeying around" with the preschoolers and made a special monkey snack with the children.  They loved their little monkeys!  The were almost as much fun to make as they were to eat!

The base of the head is a mini pancake that was warmed up in the microwave.  They added some chocolate frosting "fur".  The ears are mini vanilla wafers and the nose/mouth is another vanilla wafer with a little piece broken off.  The eyes are m&m's and the smile is gel frosting.