Nursery Rhyme Stick Puppet Props

While planning our Nursery Rhyme unit, I wanted to give my girls the opportunity to practice and retell the rhymes on their own. I found that making nursery rhyme stick puppets provided the perfect opportunity for practice.

Doggie, Doggie, Where's Your Bone?

At first I wasn't sure if my girls would appreciate my puppet plan, but you know what? They loved them!

Supplies:
Wooden Dowel Rods
Wooden figures
Packing Tape
E6000 glue

I decided to keep things easy and use pre-painted wooden animals and shapes from Hobby Lobby. Obviously these only represent a few of the nursery rhymes we studied, but it was a good start.

Hey Diddle, Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle...

My little girls knew I was making something for them and they didn't want to wait! So I took the fast route to making a stick puppet. I used packing tape to adhere the figure to the dowel rod. Quick and easy!

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

Right away they grabbed a stick and then starting singing or reciting rhymes!

Little Bo Peep or Mary Had a Little Lamb

These figures jogged their memories and gave them the opportunity to put on their own nursery rhyme play.

I store our puppet props in an oatmeal container. The girls enjoyed this so much that I will be adding additional figures in the near future. I will also be using super glue to adhere those figures to the sticks so that the props will last longer.

You can keep up with all our Nursery Rhyme activities on my Nursery Rhyme page.

Nursery Rhymes: Humpty Dumpty

We are getting back into the nursery rhyme groove after taking a week off. Our nursery rhyme of the week was Humpty Dumpty!

We've read Humpty Dumpty many times in our Nursery Rhyme book. I love to add sequence activities though to see if the girls can remember details. It's also another opportunity to practice memorizing the rhyme.

We also created an easy Humpty Dumpty story prop craft. All you need is a wooden egg with a flat bottom (I found mine in the craft section at Meijer), 2 google eyes, glue, and a black Sharpie marker. Optional items: small pom pom and craft foam scrap piece for a hat.

Glue the eyes on to the egg. Then draw a face with the black marker. We decided our Humpty Dumpty needed a hat, so we fashioned one out of a piece of scrap foam and a pom pom.

While Humpty Dumpty is drying, have your child build Humpty Dumpty a wall! My daughter chose her brother's Lego's over her Duplo's, but you could use wooden blocks too.

 

Place Humpty Dumpty high on his wall. Then reenact the rhyme!

 We made sure to color our Humpty Dumpty coloring sheet to add to our Nursery Rhyme notebook. 

I often find my little girls "reading" their nursery rhyme notebook around the house. They have most of them memorized already just by hearing them read so many times.

I printed off a Humpty Dumpty puzzle from my Mother Goose Phonics book by Scholastic. This book has many printable work sheets that work with word blends and rhyming words. Though it is a little too difficult for my 3yr. old,  the materials are probably just right for my 5 yr. old.

Yeah! Humpty Dumpty was put back together again!

You can keep up with all our Nursery Rhyme activities on my Nursery Rhyme page.

Hey Diddle, Diddle Nursery Rhyme Craft

Every Thursday for the next couple of months I will be sharing what we did with nursery rhymes at my home. This week I'm sharing nursery rhyme ideas here and over at Totally Tots. Be sure to check out what we did for Jack and Jill.

Pin It

Hey, Diddle, Diddle has become one of my 3yr. old's favorite nursery rhymes. I think it is because the poem is so silly! A cat playing a fiddle? A cow jumping over the moon? She thinks it is hilarious--especially when we use our nursery rhyme props to act the rhyme out. This week we made a craft that we used when retelling the rhyme.

Hey Diddle, Diddle Craft Instructions

Supplies:
Large google eyes
Medium google eyes
2- regular paper plate
Hey Diddle Diddle Rhyme Print-out
Spoon Pattern
Black construction paper
white glue
scissors
glue stick
stapler

Print out the spoon, the rhyme, and the feet for the dish. Color and then glue medium google eyes on the spoon.

Glue large google eyes on the plate, staple or glue the feet to the bottom of the plate. Next glue the spoon onto the plate. Once that is dry, staple another paper plate to the back so that this project opens like a book.

 

Glue the nursery rhyme on the inside. Now you have your own Hey Diddle, Diddle book!

I would find my daughter "reading" her Hey, Diddle, Diddle book to anyone who would stop and listen. She loved it!

Here she is "reading" the poem to Grandma (it was laundry day--please excuse all the clothes in the background--lol!)

For a twist on this poem we read the book, Hey Diddle, Diddle by Eve Bunting. We really enjoyed the ending plus it was a great book to point out rhyming words and talk about music.

 We also colored another Hey Diddle, Diddle coloring page to slip into our nursery rhyme notebook.

You can keep up with all our Nursery Rhyme activities on my Nursery Rhyme page.

Pin It

Nursery Rhymes: Little Bo Peep

Oh Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep---- and we found them! This was our first week working with nursery rhymes. We did crafts and/or activities two days out of the week, and the other days we read our nursery rhyme book and retold the rhyme several different ways. My 3yr. old almost has the poem memorized already! One fun way of retelling (which I did not get a picture of) was using a lamb puppet. The lamb puppet would help her "read" the story. Then it would run away and I'd have to find it. :)

I won't have a sensory tub for each rhyme (check out the Nursery Rhyme sensory tub by Sarah on Totally Tots), but I had enough stuff to make a Little Bo Peep activity tub. I placed cotton balls, white pom poms, plastic sheep, and sheep printouts into a plastic bin.

 

My daughter helped Little Bo Peep sort her sheep by size. Just print out the sorting mat and cards below to complete this activity.

 

Little Bo Peep Sheep Sort

* Print out more sheep cards and create patterns: big, small, big, small, ________ etc.
* Get large foam dice. Roll the dice and then add that many sheep to the pen.
* Use the sheep as counters.
* Talk about how we make clothing etc. from sheep's wool. Have your child collect the wool aka cotton balls and place into a bucket.
* My daughter just have fun playing with all the sheep. She had her own flock that she took care of for a day.

We also did a simple sheep craft along with a Bible devotional. Check out my post at Totally Tots for more information.

You can keep up with all our Nursery Rhyme activities on my Nursery Rhyme page.

Linking up to Link & Learn

Pin It

Getting Ready for Nursery Rhyme Time

Starting in Feb. I will be posting Nursery Rhyme activities both here and on Totally Tots on Thursdays. Nursery rhymes are a wonderful way to introduce young learners to rhymes and develop phonemic awareness. Did you know that it is a skill to hear words that rhyme? I have been working on getting things ready for this unit and thought it might be helpful to list some of my thoughts and resources that I will be using.

The Books:




There are many different collections and version of Nursery Rhymes. I will mainly be using classic nursery rhymes. If you haven't read any nursery rhymes for awhile, you might want to pre-read the book versions you will be using. Some of those classic poems might be too harsh or violent (i.e. certain version of the Old Woman in the Shoe say,"She whipped them all soundly and put them to bed," while other versions say, "She gave them all kisses and sent them to bed.")

The Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme book by Scott Gustafson is a beautiful, hardback book. The pictures are gorgeous! I'm tempted to tear them out and frame them. My children love to look at the pictures in this book. I do want to point out that one poem included in the book, the Bat, Bat poem, has a picture of a wizard catching a bat.

My Very First Mother Goose is another good beginning collection. Wonderful illustrations. Some of the standard nursery rhymes are missing such as Mary Had a Little Lamb.

Best Mother Goose Ever by Richard Scarry is the book I grew up listening to when I was a kid. Typical Richard Scarry style illustrations.

Sylvia Long's Mother Goose is another collection that has good reviews on Amazon. I don't own this version yet but hope to add it to our collection soon.

This week I've been printing off nursery rhyme poem pages and sequence cards. Each week I will introduce a new poem (or two) and we will add the poem to our Nursery Rhyme notebooks. Any crafts and other misc. things will also be placed in the notebook. I plan on using the sequence cards in our pocket chart for retelling the rhyme. I will probably be printing off pages from Kizclub too. There are word cards plus coloring pages. Some of the full color pages could be printed on magnet paper and used for retelling.

I also gathered up various odds and ends that go with different rhymes. We will use those objects for retelling and games.

For those who are wondering what rhymes I will be doing--- well I never know for sure but here is a partial list to start:

Little Bo Peep
Mary Had a Little Lamb
Baa, Baa, Black Sheep
Twinkle, Twinkle
Hey Diddle, Diddle
Jack and Jill
Jack Be Nimble
Little Jack Horner
Hickory Dickory Dock

I've also been collecting Nursery Rhyme ideas on my Pinterest board. If you have any great nursery rhyme links, leave it in the comments so I can add it.

Pin It