Today I literally had children swinging from a vine! Well, at least that’s what it was in their imaginations! We did a jungle themed skip counting activity today and it was a definite hit!
Jaida loved being a monkey on a vine while she skip counted by two’s to twenty. She probably could have gone all the way to 100, but I’m not sure my school room floor is big enough to hold all of those jungle trees!
The activity was very easy to put together, just like everything that we do because as a mother of four I don’t have time for time consuming prep. I’m a big fan of activities that take me 5-10 minutes or less to put together.
This one from print to finish took about 10 minutes.
To make the jungle, print out the skip counting pages and laminate if desired. That was actually my biggest use of time while getting this activity together, but I always prefer that my activities last through more than one use.
And once you see what we did, you will probably want to laminate too.
To create the vine I took a strand of burlap ribbon and stapled construction paper leaves to the top section. If you don’t have burlap ribbon, you could use a long piece of craft paper and twist it into a vine. Or you can use plain brown ribbon.
I only put the leaves on the top because I knew that kids would be pulling on it and they would likely rip the leaves off in the process of the activity.
To make the leaves, I tri-folded several pieces of construction paper and then cut a leaf shape. Plus, just for fun I cut little bits in the sides of the leaves to resemble palm leaves. It adds a little bit more dimension to the vine.
Then, I arranged the trees on the floor so that the subsequent numbers weren’t directly beside each other, but didn’t require a huge leap either.
I added a little monkey and we were all set.
She grabbed ahold of the vine and ‘swung’ from tree to tree counting by two’s.
We only used up to twenty, but I included up to forty in the pack.
The monkey mask is very easy to put together as well. I cut out the head and the eyes. Then, I paper punched holes into the ears and tied thin elastic to create the headband to hold the mask up.
I prefer elastic because you don’t have to be as exact in the size and it holds itself up better than string.
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