Makerspaces: Aotearoa New Zealand: Book to Boogie: “Count the Monkeys”

Wednesday, 2 September 2015

Book to Boogie: “Count the Monkeys”

Book to Boogie is a monthly series that pairs picture books with dance and movement activities for preschool story time. The series is curated by Kerry Aradhya of Picture Books & Pirouettes and written by a different guest writer each month. We hope that children’s librarians, as well as classroom teachers and dance educators, will find these activities useful and fun!

by Kerry Aradhya

We have many of author/illustrator Mac Barnett’s picture books on our bookshelf at home. Among the many reasons we love him is that he’s a master at keeping readers engaged in his stories. One of his more recent stories, Count the Monkeys, is one of the most engaging of all. With equally engaging illustrations by Kevin Cornell, this book is sure to have your preschoolers bopping and bouncing in their seats while practicing that oh-so-important skill they will need for kindergarten. You guessed it — counting!

The book starts out with 1 king cobra who has scared off all the monkeys. The cobra is then scared off by 2 mongooses, who are then scared off by 3 crocodiles, and so on and so on. The narrator of the story keeps trying to get the reader to count the monkeys, but the monkeys don’t actually make an appearance until the very end of the book. At least the reader — and the kids in your story time — still get to practice counting…all the way up to 10 polka-dotted rhinoceroses with bagpipes and bad breath who chase away some lumberjacks!

Movement Ideas

I can think of two main ways to approach movement to go along with this book. Because the text itself is full of movement and requests for reader participation, the easiest thing to do is to have the kids stay seated but ask them to move as requested as you read the book. Here’s an example in which all the kids will have a chance to raise their hands…

Look! 2 MONGOOSES have chased away that cobra. Or is that 2 MONGEESE? I am pretty sure it is 2 MONGOOSES. Let’s vote. Raise your hand if you think it’s mongooses. Now raise your hand if you think it’s mongeese. Interesting. Turn the page — I bet the monkeys will come back.

In other parts of the book, the kids will have a chance to move their hands in a zigzag pattern, put their arms over their heads, and cover their eyes. They will also have a chance to get involved vocally, such as by making a loud roar and humming a happy tune. It could really be a lot of fun!

If you have time after you read the book once, another way to incorporate movement into the story time is to give the kids time to explore movements that the characters in the book would make. And there are many characters: king cobras, mongooses, crocodiles, grizzly bears, bee swarms, beekeepers, wolves, lumberjacks, rhinoceroses, and monkeys!

You can give the kids suggestions, for example asking them to “slide like a king cobra” or “leap like a mongoose,” or you can give them complete freedom to move how they think a particular character might move. Adding a little music or sound to the activity could also be fun. You could play music, stopping the music and having kids freeze each time you want to introduce a new character. Ringing a bell or beating a drum between characters could also work.

More Books for Story Time

Do you like creating themes for your story times? If you do, Count the Monkeys could part of a monkey theme, perhaps paired with a story from the Five Little Monkeys Storybook Treasury by Eileen Christelow. Or you could pair it with other books by Mac Barnett such as Telephone (with illustrations by Jen Corace), Sam and Dave Dig a Hole (with illustrations by Jon Klassen), and Extra Yarn (also with illustrations by Jon Klassen).

Kerry Aradhya is a children’s poet and aspiring picture book author whose poetry and action rhymes have been published in Highlights High Five, Ladybug, and Stories for Children Magazine. Kerry has also danced with the Houston Grand Opera, the Natasha Carlitz Dance Ensemble, and several other small dance companies. She shares her passion for picture books and her love of dance at Picture Books & Pirouettes, where she blogs regularly about integrating children’s literature and movement.