Jungle Songs

Our Jungle theme was perfect for introducing lots of fun jungle and animal songs, the most popular one being A Jungle Adventure: A Journey with Jesus.  This one gets requested by the kids ALL the time! Unfortunately, I can't show you a link because I can't find it on youtube, but if you search "A Jungle Adventure" on iTunes you will find it under the album title "Big Jungle Adventure: Jammin' Jungle Tunes".

Who's the King of the Jungle? is another fun song we've been singing.  Here's a video of the exact song we use in class, but you'll have to get your child to show you the actions since we use different ones.



Out of all the stories we read this month, Ten Naughty Little Monkeys was probably the kids favorite, so we of course had to sing 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.  I'm sure you know the song, but here's the lyrics anyway:


5 little monkeys jumping on the bed (all five fingers up, with your hand moving up and down)
1 fell off and bumped his head (smack the palm of your right hand to your forehead)
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said (make your thumb and your pinkie into a phone and hold it up to your ear)
"No more monkeys jumping on the bed!" (wag your finger and scold the monkeys in a deep voice)


4 little monkeys.....(continue down to one)

1 little monkey jumping on the bed
He fell off and bumped his head
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said
"Put those monkeys straight to bed!"


Another requested monkey song we learned was 5 Little Monkeys Swinging in a Tree.


5 little monkeys swinging in a tree (all five fingers pointing up and swinging side to side)
Teasing Mr. Crocodile "you can't catch me!" (wag your finger and taunt the crocodile in a higher voice)
Along came Mr. Crocodile as quiet as can be.....(whisper these words as you place your hands together to make a crocodile's mouth)
AND SNAP! (yell this, as you clamp your hands together)


4 little monkeys.....(repeat all the way down to one)

1 little monkey swinging in a tree
Teasing Mr. Crocodile "you can't catch me!"
Along came Mr. Crocodile as quiet as can be....
AND..."Missed me, missed me, now you gotta kiss me!" (point to your cheek and taunt the crocodile in a high voice)
MUAH!!!! (make an exaggerated big kiss in the air)




We've been singing Hip Hip Hip Hippopotamus  a lot as well, but the new favorite song of the kids is Elephants Have Wrinkles.

A Jungle Adventure

I decked out the classroom in a Jungle theme, which actually began even before school started when I mailed each child their own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom postcard.  I made a matching bulletin board to go with it, with a letter for each child's first initial.  Centers were really fun to create with animal costumes in the Dramatic play area:

And some animal puppets too!  The kids put on some fantastic little shows for us through the puppet window.

I had Crocodile Dentist on the puzzle table but he quickly got broken, so he became a water table toy which I think was even more fun!  Miss Anna made our water swampy by adding green food coloring, and I added small plastic animals for the crocodile to chomp down on.  The kids loved seeing how many animals could fit in his mouth and it became a great opportunity for counting when I'd ask how many were inside his mouth.

The sand was full of jungle animals and little trees that the kids loved to dig deep into the sand and section off areas.

At circle time we read some fantastic animal books like:

• Lion's Lunch?
  
• Hilda Must Be Dancing
• Rumble in the Jungle
• On Noah's Ark
  
• Ten Naughty Little Monkeys (possibly the favorite!)

We made fun "Snake Tracks" during craft time by cutting strips of yarn, dipping it in paint and then dragging it across the paper.  This gave us a chance to talk about snakes in the jungle but also relate it to the snake in our bible story when we talked about Adam and Eve sinning in the garden of Eden.

I hope you enjoyed taking a trip through the jungle with me!

Noah's Ark

This week we are learning about Noah's Ark in our bible story time, so it has been infiltrating our classroom.  The water in the water table is blue with all kinds of animals hiding in there.

We have a pretty fantastic Fisher Price Noah's Ark set with a TON of Fisher Price animals, so the toy table was a lot of fun to re-enact the story and pretend.  I even had a couple kids arrange all the animals in pairs, Two by Two.

Our Noah's Ark craft combined scissor skill practice with actually making it rain onto our arks.  I had a simple drawing of an ark photocopied onto brown card stock.  The kids first colored the ark with crayons, cut it out and then glued it onto the paper.  Some then drew pictures with crayons on the white paper, but most wanted to skip right to the rain!

I filled a spray bottle with water and blue food coloring.  You have to make sure the food coloring is pretty concentrated so that it looks very blue on paper.  The kids placed their drawing into a bucket, stood back and then squirted the water bottle to make it "rain" onto their Noah's ark.  The water repels from the crayon and makes a really cool water resist effect with tiny blue droplets all over the page.  Unless of course the kids got trigger happy, and actually "flooded" their page ;)

We also talked about the rainbow being a promise from God to never flood the earth again.  We can stand on God's promises and keep them in our hearts.