Monkeyshines in the Speech Room: Adorable Five Little Monkeys Craft and Language Activities

My preschoolers love those naughty little monkeys who boast: “You can’t catch me!” So do you think you can capture the attention of a group of preschoolers for the second day of Five Little Monkeys Pre-K speech therapy? Oh yeah. You bet.

Day 2 of our Five Little Monkeys activities

In my last post, we talked about Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed and I shared a FREE little monkey dot marker activity. Be sure to take a peek. We had lots of fun, and my little sweeties were definitely up for more.

We started with the Five Little Monkeys Swinging in a Tree book

The cover of the Five Little Monkeys Swing in the Tree book by Eileen Christelow. Five monkeys are sitting in a tree above an alligator who is in the water below.

The Five Little Monkeys Swinging in a Treebook by Eileen Christelow was perfect to add additional language and articulation opportunities to our Five Little Monkeys series.

Repetitive stories like this are perfect to encourage children to participate. Do the fingerplay actions as you turn the pages, and your preschoolers will enthusiastically chant the rhyme along with you.

Each time the crocodile sneaks up another monkey we make “jaws” with our two hands, open wide, and …SNAP! One more little monkey missing. Oh no! On the upside, it’s terrific practice for the /sn/ blend!

Here are the fingerplay motions:

1. Five little monkeys swinging in a tree.

(Hold up your hand with all five fingers hanging down, and make the monkeys swing!)

2. Teasing Mr. Crocodile, You can’t catch me! (point to your shoulder with your thumb)

3. Along came Mr. Crocodile swimming quietly…… (put your palms together and make him swim through the water.)

4. SNAP! (Move your hands apart like jaws, then clap your hands together.)

5. Repeat with four fingers and so on, until there are no monkeys left!

We loved using this crocodile puppet!

This puppet gives me story-telling super powers! While reading the story, this guy helps me turn pages, then gets ready to snap up some monkeys for dinner.

When I saw him on a trip to New Orleans, I knew I had to have him. Did I buy jewelry or a cute dress while there? Nope. I was drooling over the puppets in a little toy store.

I’m pretty much always in the preschool frame of mind. Love, love my littles!

More Five Little Monkeys activities my kids totally loved.

We didn’t stop there. We made a cute little Five Little Monkeys craft, a fun game, and some send-home pages too.

Five Little Monkeys Craft

We made these adorable monkeys, and of course embedded plenty of language and articulation practice along the way: body parts, requesting, /st/ (We love to say “stick in on!” as we glue a piece.) We decorated with bows. bow-ties and business ties too. I love seeing how each child makes it their own.

The Perfect Five Little Monkeys Game

In our “activity” center, we played this fun game. Say your words and you get a monkey to put in the tree. Be careful though, because the “tree top” is attached with a magnet and will fall if you don’t balance those monkeys. And down below? There’s a hungry crocodile of course!

FREE Home Practice Activities

I always like sending something home for carryover practice, so I created these activities. It’s a freebie available in my Teachers Pay teacher’s store. It’s a fun little collection of 6 activities (color by number, mystery squares, friendly faces, and more) that coordinates with my Mixed Group Magic and Quick List sets.

What is that? My Mixed Group Magic activities have a box on each page where you can paste a custom prompt list for each child, so everyone’s goals are right on the page, whether it’s s-blends, initial /m/, wh questions, or other goals.

Head over and download this Five Little Monkeys freebie for yourself. If you do, pretty please, leave me feedback in my store when you do. I truly appreciate it!

If you haven’t grabbed my Five Little Monkeys Dot Marker Activity in my last post, you will want to head there too. It’s free when you sign up as a subscriber! Click here to read the post: Best-Ever Books for Preschool Speech Therapy: Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.

How did I fit in so many activities?

I have centers set up in my 2-hour preschool therapy program, and our “art” center is one stop. You may not use my delivery model, but if you do in-class therapy you could easily do each activity as a center, or simply use the activities over several sessions in a traditional pull-out setting.

Boy, does that make planning easy! Plus the repetition is fantastic for comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, and story retelling.