Tag Archives: hide and seek

Ducky Discovery

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What if you discover a duck in your fridge? What if you discover ducks all over your HOUSE? With this easy printable project and hilarious picture book, you can do just that!

We read Duck in the Fridge by Jeff Mack (Two Lions, 2014). When a little boy asks his Dad a bedtime question about a Mother Goose book, Dad recalls the time he was a kid and found a duck in the fridge. And how more ducks begin appearing in various rooms of the house. The crowd quickly expands to include sheep, dogs, cows…until NO ONE is getting any sleep! Finally, clever Dad contrives to read Mother Goose, which does the trick. Don’t miss the final page of the book. It will make you laugh out loud!

You’ll need:

  • A ducky discovery template, printed on 8.5″ x 11″ paper
  • A couple toilet paper or paper towel tubes
  • Scissors and tape for construction
  • Markers for decorating

Color and cut the ducks from the template, then tape them to snippets of toilet paper or paper towel tubes so they stand upright. Then hide the ducks in various parts of your house and wait for them to be discovered! Duck in the Closet…

Duck on the Pillow…

Duck in the Tub…

Annnnnnd Duck in the Studio (look carefully!)…

A Bounty of Bunnies!

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It’s a bounty of bunnies bunnies bunnies in a basket basket basket! This simple project is both a hide and seek AND pattern game! Plus…rainbow bunnies. Rainbow bunnies are just awesome.

We read The Runaway Bunny, written by Margaret Wise Brown, and illustrated by Clement Hurd (HarperCollins, 1942). A little bunny poses a series of runaway-from-home scenarios, thwarted each time by his equally imaginative mother!

You’ll need:

  • 1 large tissue box
  • White poster board or card stock
  • 6 toilet paper tubes
  • A selection of construction paper
  • Scissors, stapler and tape for construction
  • Markers for decorating

First, the bunny basket.Cut the top off a large tissue box, then add a poster board handle and some construction paper ears, eyes, nose, and tail. Your bunnies are toilet paper tubes wrapped with construction paper. Six bunnies, six rainbow colors!

To play the hide and seek game, have a grown up or older sibling hide the little bunnies around the house. Then, ask your story time kid to find them and tuck them into the big bunny basket. For a pattern game variation, cut color cards out of construction paper, then shuffle them and ask your child to find the bunnies in the order of the color cards!

The Runaway Bunny was selected by a little girl who aged out of our Tiger Tales story time. It’s a big favorite of hers, so Emmalyn…this project is for you!

Take the Cake

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take the cakeA trio of birds has invaded your kitchen, intent on repeatedly interrupting your bonding with a baked good. Can you get the birds out of the kitchen and still take the cake?

We read Marigold Bakes a Cake by Mike Malbrough (Philomel Books, 2017). On Monday, Marigold the cat ALWAYS bakes. With no distractions, Marigold measures and mixes the ingredients just so. Everything is going well…until birds start unexpectedly visiting his kitchen. This drives uber-organized Marigold more and more crazy until he finally loses it in a total feline frenzy. Can the birds and Marigold reach a cake-appreciating middle ground? Hilariously, as it turns out, they cannot.

This project was designed for a little girl who has been coming to Tiger Tales for 3 years! Marigold Bakes a Cake was the (totally awesome) book she selected for her final visit with us. Diana, this one’s for you!

You’ll need:

  • 1 small tissue box
  • 1 small paper plate
  • 1 paper cup
  • 3 toilet paper tubes
  • Construction paper
  • 1 cardboard box kitchen (more on this later!)
  • Scissors, tape, and glue for construction
  • Markers for decorating
  • Hot glue

First, the cake! This was a small tissue box decorated with construction paper and marker. We also added pom-poms, fabric flowers, and ribbons for more texture. The cake stand is a small paper plate flipped over, and hot glued to a similarly flipped paper cup. We used patterned tape to decorate the cake stand, but markers work great too!

cake on standTo make the birds, wrap 3 toilet paper tubes with construction paper and add paper wings. Optional: self-adhesive foam beaks, eye stickers, and feather crests. Or, just use markers to add features to your birds.

cake birds Once you have your cake, cake stand, and birds, it’s time to play the kitchen game! Katie and I used a bunch of recycled boxes to build a kitchen with a fridge, counter, sink, range, and oven.

front of kitchenCut into the back of the set were little trap doors. The trap doors (and the hole in the sink) allowed me to sneak the toilet paper tube birds into the kitchen.

back of kitchen Ready to play the kitchen game? First, kids handed me their birds and placed their cakes on the counter. Then, they took 10 steps back to the starting line. I would hide 1 bird in the kitchen and shout “The bird’s in the freezer!” The kid would race forward, find the bird, and run back to the starting line. We repeated this, using different kitchen locations, until all 3 birds were captured. The prize was their cake!

grab the birdsIf you don’t have time to construct a kitchen, simply tape images of kitchen elements onto boxes. Then drop the birds into the boxes for the kids to locate.