Felt Friday: Ten in the bed

Ten in the bed:

Ten out of the bed:

This is a great song to use to introduce children to different animals: what's fun about it, especially, is the hodge podge of domestic and farm animals. This leaves the door open for a storytime about cats, dogs, pets, or farm life! The song is useful also for the more obvious reason: it's a counting song.

Here it goes:

Ten in the bed
There were ten in the bed,
And the little one said,
“Roll over! Roll over!” [do motions]
So they all rolled over
And one fell out.
[you can also say "And Dog fell out," etc. or even add noises, eg. "Splat!" "Crash" "Meow!"]

There were nine in the bed ... etc.

[before the last verse I make them go "shhhhh" and make the little girl character lie down in bed]
There was one in the bed,
And the little one said,
"Good night." [motion going to sleep]

This felt was a lot of fun to make, because the animals are really small, which means less detail work and they are still oddly cute, if I must say so myself. The bed is extra-big (about 26 cm) and the burgundy bed frame is that harder, skinnier felt, re-enforced with velcro behind the "bedposts" so that it stays stuck on the board even with the weight of ten in the bed. The blue bedspread is a stretchier, knobbly soft felt, glued and stapled on each side (because we all know there can be accidents sometimes!)

Each animal is about the size of one of my fingers. My favourite is the goat (wait, my favourite is almost always the goat, whether we're talking cheese or felts...).

I used this felt this week for the theme "Families." We read Good night, Sam by Marie-Louise Gay and Les Dents de ma Maman by Antoine Guilloppé.

Other songs you can use with this felt, depending on your theme, include "Five little monkeys" (I laminated a set of monkeys from this wonderful website, which my colleague Courtney told me about years ago - I also sometimes use their stories as templates for felts...), "Skinnamarink" (families - love), "Where is Thumbkin" (families - people in them!), or either of the following action rhymes. Enjoy!

Where are my baby mice
Where are the baby mice? (squeak, squeak, squeak)
I do not see them (peek, peek, peek)
Here they come out of the hole in the wall
One, two, three, four, five. That's all!

Come little chickens
"Come little chickens," calls Mother Hen
"It's time to take your nap again." [Beckoning motion]
And under her feathers the small chicks creep, [Fingers of right hand creep into folded left hand]
And she clucks a song till they fall asleep. [Move hands gently in rocking motion]