Today I’m writing in collaboration with Tonya Dirksen’s Strings, Keys, and Melodies Blog for the rhyme “5 Little Monkeys Swinging from the Tree.” So also see her blog for some more ideas!
Five Little Monkeys Bake a Birthday Cake is by Eileen Christelow who has many wonderful picture books for children. In this story, the 5 monkeys are baking a birthday cake for their mother who is asleep with a do not disturb sign on her door. The monkeys proceed to put the cake in the oven, which causes so much smoke firemen visit the house. When there is no actual fire, the firemen end up helping to frost the cake. Finally, it is time to wake up mama! The 5 monkeys, mama, and two firemen have a birthday cake for breakfast. This would be a great book to encourage your child or children to help measure and cook in the kitchen. Cooking helps provide measurement math experiences for math readiness for school.
Although Wild Baby Animals by Karen Wallace is a level 1 for beginning to read, it appears to me to be about a level 15 or 16 DRA. This is a site from Portland Public Schools with an online book level database that works for many books, but not this one. The photos in this book are adorable and children so enjoy looking at photos of baby animals. Inside there is a picture of a baby monkey hanging on its mother’s back as it cannot walk when first born. I selected this book as our library had a copy with an orangutan on the cover, but the photo I found online had a bear. I assume different copies have different covers. Schools are moving more and more towards using nonfiction books for their curriculum, so some exposure at home would be excellent prior to school. Boys often prefer nonfiction when learning to read as it is interesting, and also doesn’t sound babyish when reading aloud.
Orangutan Tongs by Jon Agee has pretty sophisticated humor that involves an 
The Dirksen’s are having a music camp this week and they are studying different instruments so the PDF (below) has musical monkeys, and a math work page to accompany the PowerPoint I made for the 5 Little Monkeys Swinging from the Tree rhyme. The PowerPoint is available on the Keys, Strings, and Melodies blog. Since the music school is in California, we can’t all attend, but we can benefit from the wonderful things Tonya shares online about music education.
Thanks for reading, Carolyn
