Monkey Puzzle Activities Bundles
Less planning, more learning! Save time preparing super fun ESL lessons with Monkey Puzzle by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.
♦ Hours of fun, dynamic activities that you can use NOT ONLY with the Monkey Puzzle story, but for any jungle topic.
♦ Flexible materials and activities for 6-10 lessons.
♦ Perfect for mixed age groups or to use across a range of levels.
♦ Pick and choose the activities you want. All the activities are great value at around €1 - €2, with bigger and bigger discounts the more you buy.
♦ Get ALL the activities for just €10.50!
Ready to get ALL of the Monkey Puzzle activities?
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Flashcards and game cards
Perfect for a whole host of whole class, small group and pair practice of your target language.
- Help your young learners learn key animal, body parts, and story language from the Monkey Puzzle story in a fun, dynamic way.
- Try out the included game ideas for interactive practise and easy learning.
- A choice of three card types provide plenty of learning opportunities so your esl kids never get bored.
- Perfect for helping you plan engaging and effective lessons so you have structure to your Monkey Puzzle story lessons.
Interactive storytelling and retelling
While you can incorporate retelling with any of the resources on this page, these resources are more specifically designed for retelling and manipulating the story.
Your ESL young learners will acquire more language from the story with multiple retellings. The resources below are super helpful for allowing you to do this in dynamic and fun ways. Empower your young learners to tell the story for themselves (or even add their own unique twist on it!)
- Especially adapted, simplified text so it’s super easy for you to tell the story in a way that your kids can understand and engage with.
- Useful prompts on the back tell you exactly what to say AND provide comprehension checks and ways to promote interaction.
- Super adaptable! Use them in storytelling, games, sequencing activities and more.
- Perfect for switching up the dynamics and keeping your kids engaged.
Perfect for ESL learners, this version of the story is super easy for your children to understand and learn.
- Helps you tell the story in an alternative way. Use as well as or instead of the book to incorporate multiple retellings without your kids ever getting bored.
- Great for big groups or online. Everyone can see. No peering or jostling to see the pages!
- Print in small cards and use in sequencing and story retelling.
- Play vocabulary games with the key language in the engaging images.
- Includes 3 different templates to easily cater to different levels and your available resources.
- Follow the included activity suggestions and links to supplementary resources for a super dynamic and engaging lesson.
- Get playful and use them in roleplays, free play and acting out your favourite monkey songs and stories.
- Practise useful colours, shapes or pattern language while making them.
- Includes lots of activity suggestions for playing with the puppets while and after you make them.
- Perfect for mixed age groups. Templates for every stage of motor skills development.
- Get playful and use them in roleplays, free play and acting out your favourite stories starring butterflies. I particularly love Monkey Puzzle by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.
- Less planning, more learning! Comes with detailed activity procedures for a super engaging lesson or lessons across a range of different levels.
- A dynamic and engaging craft to practise jungle language and/or dramatise a story (e.g. Monkey Puzzle).
- Choose from smaller and larger templates, all with helpful cutting guidelines to support your youngest learners.
♦ Easy to cater to different abilities and skills focus by choosing from 4 different templates.
♦ Ideal for practising sequencing skills and at the same time consolidating language from the story.
♦ A fun and interactive way to incorporate story retelling, and bring English outside the classroom.
♦ Includes super useful activity procedures and learning objectives to make planning easy.
Worksheets with a twist
Printables that are perfect for introducing and practising key story and jungle animals language. Follow the activity suggestions for dynamic ways to work on receptive and productive skills.
You’ll also find murals that work great for whole class projects.
- Great for retelling the story and having the children hunt and find the pieces to stick in their picture.
- Perfect for even your littlest learners. Stretch your older learners by getting them to ask each other for the pieces.
- Includes useful jungle animal vocabulary from the story: bat, spider, frog, butterfly, parrot, snake, elephant, and monkey.
- A fun way to practise number recognition.
- Practise jungle animals and useful phrases from the story with the animal maze.
- Perfect for an engaging activity for fast finishers.
- Excellent for using in interactive games and revision activities after making it. Ideas in accompanying activity suggestions.
- Involve everyone in the class to create something they can be proud of.
- Includes useful animal vocabulary from the story: monkey, butterfly, spider, elephant, bat, parrot, frog, caterpillar
- Excellent for using in interactive games and revision activities after making it.
- Involve everyone in the class to create something they can be proud of.
- Includes useful animal vocabulary from both the story and the story pictures: monkey, butterfly, spider, elephant, bat, parrot, frog, caterpillar, snake, alligator, turtle, tiger, lizard, insect, bird
- Lots of opportunities for other useful nature language too: rocks, flowers, trees, leaves, grass, bushes
Games to make and play
All of these can be made to play before your class, but they are also fantastic for integrating even more language practice because the kids can make their own copies. Super useful for bringing English outside the classroom – your young learners will be so excited to play these at home with their families.
- Choose from a range of templates to easily differentiate according to ability, age and vocabulary focus.
- A super effective way to provide repetition of useful animal and description language from the story. See the full list below.
- Great for an engaging way to practise numbers too!
- Follow the tips and suggestions for fun ways to incorporate full sentences and story language in an interactive and dynamic way.
- A super interactive way to practise jungle animals vocabulary and descriptive language.
- Cater to all ages and abilities with a choice of different board games and procedures.
- Give your young learners even more English speaking practice with the create your own game versions. They’ll play at home with their families too!
- Easy to follow tips and suggestions that give you loads of ideas for different ways to play.
You’ll also get the below free resources in the Monkey Puzzle Activities Bundle:
Save yourself tons of time and get ALL of these Monkey Puzzle Activities
Not sure how many resources you need?
Of course it depends on your particular context, but I’d like to give you an idea of how I’ve used them across multiple levels, lessons and age groups. Below is a sample lesson map with the resources.
Note: Another important point worth mentioning is that I also use some of these resources independently rather than alongside the story.
Sample lesson resource map
Lesson 1: Flashcards and game cards (jungle animals); Find and stick jungle scene 1; Storytelling with picture book or video
Lesson 2: Storytelling cards, Shapes reveal PowerPoint game; Butterfly craft (shapes and colours version)
Lesson 3: Simplified PowerPoint Story; Sequencing with printed cards from PowerPoint story; Monkey Puzzle Marionette
Lesson 4: Flashcards and game cards (body parts and description cards); Jigsaw craft (colour dictation with story phrases and animal description). Storytelling with picture book, storytelling cards or PowerPoint (interaction focusing on animal description and story phrases)
Lesson 5: Flashcards and game cards (small group games); Board games
Lesson 6: Storytelling with picture book, storytelling cards or flashcards; Roleplay puppets; retelling story
For larger classes or rooms you have space to use for a display, I could add more lessons and/or substitute the find and stick jungle scene craft for either the Jigsaw Display Mural or the Cut and Paste Mural.
What’s more, each resource includes different templates so you can differentiate for different levels or repeat the story across year groups but using different templates.
For incredible value, get the complete set:
What do teachers say about these Monkey Puzzle resources?
How about opinions on the other Kids Club English resources?
Frequently asked questions
Yes, of course! Maybe you have the time and enjoy creating things, but it has to be said that being a young learner teacher can involve a HUGE amount of extra work making materials. Give yourself a break!
All my materials have been tried and tested in the classroom. As well as having almost 20 years of teaching experience, I am also a qualified trainer for the Trinity TYLEC (Teaching Young Learners Extension Certificate), so you can rely on the quality.
Yes! There are a range of templates to choose from within each resource so it’s super-easy to differentiate. The included Activity Suggestions will also give you ideas about how you can conduct the activity so each child can work (play!) to their full potential.
Definitely! (You knew I would say that!) No, but seriously speaking, I started making these resources for just one class but I’ve now used them several times over. I’ve even used them with the same groups in subsequent years, because the different templates allow me to vary the activity and language focus.
It’s also easily possible to use many of the jungle animals resources with any unit on the jungle, landscapes or animals.
Once you’ve had a chance to use your materials, don’t forget to come back to leave a review. As a thank you, you’ll receive a 20% discount on any other resource : )
