Our preschool class has taken quite a liking to the “5 Little Ducks” finger play. They have consistently asked to sing this song throughout the whole school year. Recently, in one of our centers, we gave the children a chance to retell the story in a little more of a hands-on way.
There are quite a few different ways to sing this song, and in our class we sing it like this…
“5 little ducks went out one day,
over the hill and far away.
Mother duck said ‘Quack, quack, quack,’
but only 4 little ducks came back!”
We continue to repeat the song as the number goes down each time, and by the end, there are “zero little ducks” to sing about anymore!
Throughout the morning, the children would stop by the table to retell the story using the illustrations in Penny Dann’s adaptation of “Five little ducks”.
The students found it helpful to have one person flip through the pages as the other person told the story using our rubber duck family…
And when someone else wanted to tell the story, we could open the book right up and help each other along as we sing the song together!
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I really like this idea and I think this would make an amazing activity for the literacy center.
This is such a cute idea. I love taking the reading/singing to a whole new level for the children. So often, we read the book or sing the song and leave it at that. I love the idea of adding it to a center so the children can deepen their learning through the hands on experience.
When we do this song, mommy ducks quacks get sadder and sadder, then at the end, daddy ducks comes along in his firm voice and all of the five little ducks come back. Kids love that part. We also talk about where the ducks might have gone, and then what happened, etc.