Curious George Book Unit

Who doesn’t love the mischievous monkey that is Curious George?  This Curious George Book Unit is for all you out there who have their very own mischievous monkeys.  It is chock full of lots of fun learning activities, all monkey themed around Curious George.

I had my mischievous monkeys fetch our Curious George book as well as any other monkey books they could find:

During this Curious George book unit we read through these multiple times each day.  They have always enjoyed Curious George and this huge book contains many of their favourite stories.  The children particularly liked the lyrical rhyming found in Monkey Puzzle, laughed out loud with The Monkey with a Bright Blue Bottom and shed a few tears whilst reading the very sweet Hug.  These were really great books to immerse our week in.

Dressing Up

Our children adore dressing up, and for this week A4 used her monkey sleep suit whilst B2 wore a Monkey Fancy Dress Costume .  They basically lived in these for the whole week!

Monkey Themed Tray Activities

• Balancing Monkeys: We bought these from a charity shop.  They are great for developing hand/eye coordination.

• Monkey Masks:  I printed out some monkey masks for them to paint (resources can be found at the end of the post):

• Tumbling Monkey Game: This is a simple game whereby each player takes it in turns to pull sticks out without allowing any monkeys to drop down:

•  Monkey Business Game: This is a balancing game requiring good eye/hand coordination:

• Make Your Own Sock Monkey: These are fabulous sets.  Inexpensive, with everything you need to complete the whole project as well as being very simple.  The only help required by A4 was the cutting up of the sock into the monkey puppet parts.  The whole kit took the two of us about half an hour.  Highly recommended:

• Who’s in the Jungle? Puzzle: This is a great puzzle, with bright colours and large pieces.  Fabulous for little hands.  We have had this puzzle for years and all five of our children have enjoyed it.  There are lots of animals in the picture to chat with your little ones about, as well:

• Geography: We included a little bit of geography by making up our Animals of the World Giant Floor Puzzle.  After putting it together, A4 pointed out all the areas of the world in which monkeys lived.  We placed some of our toy monkeys in those areas and A had lots of fun playing with them:

Mischievous Monkey Snacks

The older children helped the little ones make four simple monkey-themed snacks:

Clockwise from top left the snacks they made were:

1. Frozen choco banana: Cut a banana in half.  Push the thicker end through a popsicle stick.  Wrap tightly in cling film and freeze.  Melt chocolate.  Stick the top of the frozen banana in the melted chocolate.  The chocolate will harden almost immediately and the snack is ready to eat.
2. Banana and custard pots: Chop half a banana and place in a plastic pot/cup/small bowl.  Cover with cold custard and add any goodies you fancy.  We added chocolate and fudge bits with a stick biscuit.
3. Monkey shaped tortillas: Using a monkey shaped cutter, we cut some monkey faces from tortilla.  A4 mashed some bananas and popped them atop the tortilla.  We melted some chocolate which she painted on using a clean paint brush.
4. Monkey shaped biscuits: We made some basic biscuit dough, cut out monkey faces and baked.  Each child decorated their own biscuits using icing pens.

Curious George Teddy (well nearly)

We had found a monkey in a charity shop which looked a little like Curious George.  A4 had worked so hard all week we presented her with it just before surprising the littles with a tea party.  She was a little chuffed:

Curious George Tea Party

At the end of the week I threw a surprise tea party for my little girls.  I decided to go with ‘Make your own’ tortilla pizzas for main, with a muffin tin full of fruit pieces:

and an ice cream sundae bar for dessert:

Much, much fun was had by all:

Further Monkey Themed Resources

We had a few videos and CD’s which the children watched for half an hour before bed each night.  They finished off the week with our Curious George  movie:

More Inspiration

Curious George Colouring Sheets