Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

By: Eileen Christelow

This activity is one you may use with your students in order to reinforce subtraction. After reading the book to your students have each student pick a number from 1-? (the number of students in your classroom). Next, give each students a large piece of paper with the following on it:

________ little monkeys jumping on the bed.
________ fell off and bumped their heads.
No more monkeys jumping on the bed!
________ - ________ = ________

Let the students figure out how many monkeys they must start with and how many can fall off for them to get their number they chose. Then let them illustrate their page. When all students have finished their page, put all of the pages together to make a class book. Read the book out loud to your students. To finish the lesson as a class talk about the different ways you can get to the same number with subtraction.

Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree

By:Eileen Christelow

This activity you may also use to reinforce subtraction. Before class begins make a large tree, a large alligator head, and five to ten monkeys or monkey faces.(It may be easier to make copies of them from the book and cut them out).

Next, tape the tree on the chalboard or to a wall in your classroom that is easy to get to. Tape the alligator next to the tree below it and tape the monkeys to the tree.

Have pairs of students come up to the board, have one person hide their eyes while another student takes a number of monkeys off the tree and hides them under the alligator. When the student is done have the whole class say:

Ten little monkeys sitting in the tree, teasing Mr Crocodile, "Can't catch me!"
This will let the student hiding his/her eyes know that they may turn around.

When the student turns around they must figure out how many monkeys the alligator ate, by how many are left on the tree.

Students will learn how to visually see subtraction problems in their mind without having to use pencil and paper, or their fingers. Plus, it's FUN!

Five Little Monkeys With Nothing To Do

By: Eileen Christelow

The next activity is not quite as fun, but is a "fun" graphing project.

After reading the book, have students write down how many times a month they pick up their rooms,scrub the bathroom, sweep the floor, and help their parents cook.

When they are done each student can make their own pictogram, with pictures representing each chore of how many times a month they do their chore.

Not only will their graphing skills be better, but they will realize how much they help around the house.

Mrs. Young's Math Literature link

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