Hen in the Bed: Ideas and activities

Our friends at PlayTalkRead have come up with some great crafting activities to help you get the most out of Hen in the Bed by Katrina Charman and Guilherme Karsten, which is in the Bookbug Explorer Bag.

Visit the Bookbug Explorer Bag homepage

Easy stick puppets

Bring this story to life with your own version of the bed with all the animals in it.

You’ll need:

• Lolly sticks
• A shoe box
• A piece of fabric
• Pencils and paper

Instructions:

• Make the bed from a cardboard box and use a piece of fabric for the bedcover
• Draw pictures of each animal and attach them to lollipop sticks to make little stick puppets
• Each animal starts off in bed, then the children can take turns removing the animals as you sing or read the story
• At the end of the story, the speckled hen asks all the animals to come back, and the children can take turns putting each of the stick animals back to bed

PlayTalkRead is the national programme and roadshow campaign for the Scottish Government’s Parent Club(this link will open in a new window) initiative. It showcases, demonstrates and delivers key messages to support parents and families with young children to play, talk and read together more from birth. Our team travels around Scotland to provide storytelling and play activity sessions for children to enjoy along with their parents or caregivers.

For more inspiration and ideas, or to find out where our vehicles are travelling to next, you can follow us on X @playtalkread(this link will open in a new window). PlayTalkRead is a project delivered by Smart Play Network(this link will open in a new window), a charitable organisation supporting play opportunities in Scotland.