I just shared 2 story times at my favorite preschool's end of the year picnic and wanted to share with you the Gorilla rhyme/activity that I used. I shared a fun gorilla blog post before HERE but didn't have this activity finished then. Here is 'Rainbow Bananas for Happy Gorilla'. I programmed a paper with 6 banana images and printed it on 7 different colors of paper. I used a deconstructed Google image for my Gorilla face and construction paper for him. I just free-hand cut green fun foam that I had to make the leaves to hot glue to my shoe box. I painted the inside of the shoe box black before I glued the leaves to the box. I laminated my banana papers and Gorilla face and cut them out. I taped the Gorilla face to my box and we were ready for FUN!
I had the banana shapes on a small table by the door as the kiddos entered the storytelling room. I invited them to pick a colored banana and find a spot on the rug. They held onto the banana until later in the program when we played our game. Since this was a family event I had all ages of preschoolers for the program and everyone was able to play and everyone enjoyed feeding the Gorilla! Something about stuffing a colored banana into the mouth of a Gorilla was exciting and Fun with Friends at Storytime!! Check out the other ideas on the Flannel Friday Roundup HERE!