Good Night Gorilla Tip-Toe Gross Motor Activity

Written by Rebecca Reid

Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathman is a simple but favorite book. In the book, a zookeeper says goodnight to the animals, but the sneaky gorilla grabs the keys and lets himself out. He helps the other animals out as well, and they follow the zookeeper to his home. For our activity, we practiced being sneaky and quiet on our tip-toes, just as the animals had been.  Our tip-toe gross motor activity provided an active time after story time that was fun for all. Sometimes we think learning moments need to be big or complex. I may think I need to plan something elaborate with printables and actual math and literacy practice. For today, we just decided to be sneaky animals. One of us would pretend to be the zookeeper and walk normally, saying "Good night!" and the others of us walked on tip-toes behind. Strawberry tried to sneak the plastic key ring from my pocket. Now, this sound silly, and it was. Nevertheless, Strawberry was getting practice. If you've read my blog for any length of time, you may have noticed that she is an active character. Getting her to slow down and be quieter is a struggle. But that is just what this activity encouraged. And yet, it was an active time! She also enjoyed the challenge of walking on tip-toes. It takes certain muscles to do so, and it was a good action. She loves to dance, and i think practicing walking on tip toes gives her muscles exercise. Unlike her normal "dancing," this was controlled. The idea was to be quiet and not bother the zookeeper!

Like this activity? Pin it for later!

 

See more A-Z Play at Home ideas for the letter G below.

G is for Good Night Gorilla Tip Toes Activity and …

G is for Grocery Store Pretend Play

G is for Green Color Day Activities

G is for Garden ABC Letter Hunt

G is for Guess My Number Game

   

Related Articles:

100+ Preschool Picture Book Lessons and Activities

If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you’ll know I love incorporating learning moments into familiar parts of our lives, especially reading favorite picture books. Here are some of our favorite preschool picture book lessons. Some of these book-inspired preschool lessons I’ve blogged about. To see the picture book preschool activities

Read More

A Christmas Gross Motor Skills Number Recognition Activity

In pondering ways to make learning kinetic for my active one, I decided to use the idea of a Christmas tree number hop, with a Christmas tree outlined on the floor. Our simple Christmas tree only needed ornaments with the numbers on them. I made our number recognition practice into a Christmas dance party! When the music

Read More

Hands-On Kindergarten Math with Goldilocks and Friends

If there is one story that my kids loved to return to over and over again when they were little, it was Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I added these favorite Goldilocks characters to kindergarten math activities, making hands-on learning fun and connecting our math lessons in with our story reading activities.Counting, putting numbers in

Read More

Practice Counting with Gold Coins for St. Patrick’s Day

For a time, my preschooler struggled with counting to 10. Those upper numbers just could not seem to go in order! She also did not yet recognize the numerals and could not quite comprehend 1-to-1 correspondence. But, she loves hands-on fun, so I decided to make her activity mats for counting with gold coins to

Read More

Get Exercise with a Homeschool Circus

My preschooler always loved to move! One day we were at the playground and I suggested we do a circus. She was eager to get started! We did another “circus” in our own backyard on our playset and inside as well. This is an imagination game she wants to redo again and again. Why Play CircusThe

Read More

Imagining the Butterfly Life Cycle with Whole Body Play

My preschooler simply loves butterflies right now! As we prepared a report about butterflies for our recent project fair, we took the chance to act out the parts of the butterfly life cycle. This whole body gross motor play is just how she learns! I know she’ll not forget the details we discussed: egg, caterpillar,

Read More

Sign up to get Hands-On Learning Ideas in your inbox!