The Animals on the Bus

Modeled after Larry Hort's Seals on the Bus, this is a simple animal-sounds puppet skit, perfect for toddlers.

Puppets:
Your choice. On this particular day, I used a bee, a duck, and a lion.

Props:
None.

"The Animals on the Bus"
[tune: "Wheels on the Bus']
The bee on the bus goes
buzz! buzz! buzz!
Buzz! buzz! Buzz!
buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
The bee on the bus goes
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
All through the town.

Continue with as many animals as you wish.

Easy-peasy.

The King, the Mice and the Cheese

Or, as I called it, The King, The Mouse, and The Cheese.

I used this skit as part of a "royalty" themed storytime. I have to say it was one of the most successful stories I've tried with the preschoolers so far. The story is simple, repetitive enough for kids to help with, and funny. It took little prep effort and reaped big rewards. Some of the children stayed after our craft to reenact the story with the puppets again--magic.

I can't take credit for adapting this book to a puppet story; Steven over at Beyond the Book Storytimes (http://btbstorytimes.blogspot.com/) recently posted this idea and I ran with it.

Puppets:
mouse
cat
dog
lion
dragon (in the book it's an elephant)

Props:
a faux block of cheese
a small paper crown that fits your mouse

I adapted the story a little to suit our needs. I kept all of the animals singular, I changed the elephant to a dragon, and in the end I made the dragon afraid of mice so that he flew away--the king was so elated to be rid of the mean lion that he crowned the mouse and decided to share his cheese.

It worked really well and was a lot of fun!