Signing Savvy, Your Sign Language Resource

This article is part of our “Signing Children’s Books” series, which highlights children’s books and pairs them with pre-built Signing Savvy word lists to help you get started with learning and signing the vocabulary in the book. Reading and literacy is so important. By sharing these pre-built word lists, we hope to cut down on prep time for families that are just beginning to learn ASL and hope you can find more comfort in sharing literacy with our young deaf children.

Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed is a classic counting nursery rhyme / song that has been turned into a series of books. It's a perfect beginner book for young children and new signers because of it's repetitive nature.

Extension Activities

There are many activities you can do along with this book. This is a great story to use finger puppets or toy props with for imaginary play and practicing counting and sequencing. 

Reading the book is also a great time to talk about the bedtime routine. The monkeys take a bath, put on their pajamas, brush their teeth, and say goodnight, all before the jumping starts. If you are telling the story at bedtime and have done all of these things already to get ready for bed, you can ask your little one if they did the activity after signing what the monkeys did. For example, “Five little monkeys brushed their teeth… did you brush your teeth?” There is even a Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed board game you can play with your children (although maybe not at bedtime!) that also has you act out each bedtime routine while playing.

There is a short, 3-minute video on Amazon Prime that tells the story of the Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.

The author went on to develop a series featuring these same characters, so children can revisit their favorite monkey siblings as they read in bed, bake a birthday cake, sit in a tree, play hide-and-seek, go shopping, wash a car or with nothing to do.

For a great recipe that goes with the theme of this book, see my article Cooking Up Language with Signs: Banana Monkey Bread.

Get the Pre-Built Word List for this Book!

I hope through the Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed pre-built word list you will feel confident to share this story with your children.

Word List for Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed

Related Toys and Games: 

Related Video:

Related Books: 

Signing Savvy is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking signingsavvy.com to Amazon properties. That means Signing Savvy may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking on an affiliate link, your cost will be exactly the same regardless, but Signing Savvy will automatically receive a small commission. Your support is greatly appreciated and helps us continue to improve Signing Savvy!