Hands off My Honey!

This spring one of my college courses was about teaching emerging literacy to preschoolers

As part of this class we had to design and present to a preschool class two lesson plans.

My first one was about retelling a story

I used the book

There Was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly.

(I blogged about this activity last month).

My second lesson plan was on listening (skills).

I chose the book Hands off My Honey!

by Jane Chapman.  Illustrated by Tim Warnes.

Hands off My Honey! is a fun book.

Bear has a giant jar of honey and he is NOT going to share it.

The hare brothers, mole, and mouse all plan a sneak attack to steal some honey.

While the mouse and rabbits are able to stay quiet, the mole keeps tripping and talking.

Bear catches them and while he is distracted by the mole,

the mouse steals some of the honey.

Oh No!

Does the bear get angry?

What does he do to the other animals?

Hmmmm, guess you'll have to read the book

and find out for yourself.  ;)

I read the book to the children and then we played a fun game.

I gathered the children in a big circle and chose one child to represent the bear.

The "bear" pretended to sleep while the children chanted the following...

"Isn't it funny 

how bears like honey,

buzz, buzz, buzz

I wonder why he does.

Go to sleep Mr. Bear

don't peep Mr. Bear."

While the "bear" is sleeping,

one of the children must sneak up and steal his "honey pot"

To make the"honey pot", I used a small coffee can.

I wrapped it with yellow construction paper

and wrote "honey" on it.

Then I placed a bunch of jingle bells inside the can.

After the child steals the honey pot,

they must shake it behind their back to make a noise.

All the children hide their hands behind their backs

and say

"Wake up Mr. Bear

someone stole your honey."

And the "bear" must remember where he heard the sound and find the jar of honey.

I really enjoyed this activity and I think the preschoolers that I worked with did as well.

Each child got to take a turn being the bear and hiding the honey.

They wanted to keep playing the game, because they had so much fun with it.

*Disclosure: I received a copy of the book Hands off My Honey from Tiger Tales for review purposes only.  The opinions herein are my own and were not influenced in any way.

**I got the idea for this activity from another blog (which I can't remember right now - sorry!), but the book I chose to go with it was my choice.