Sweet Little Bunny With a Fly Upon Its Nose

When I was in the Netherlands I picked up a few Dutch kids songs. One was the lief klein konijntje: Children would use hand motions (wohoo TPR) and have a lot of fun (plus it is one of the songs I still remember!)

When I was thrown into a preschool class with no chance to prep I very quickly and super roughly translated this song into English and sang it for the students.

Sweet little bunny with a fly upon its nose

Sweet little bunny with a fly upon its nose

Sweet little bunny with a fly upon its nose

And it flew from here to there

OOOOOH sweet little bunny

OOOOOOOOH sweet little bunny

OOOOOOOOOOH sweet little bunny with a fly upon its nose

That was fun, but it didn't last very long. So on a whim I had the students change the words in a mad libs like activity. So the students changed the animals, body part and adjectives.

For example: 

Happy, tall giraffe with an elephant on its elbow

Happy, tall giraffe with an elephant on its elbow

Happy, tall giraffe with an elephant on its elbow

And it flew from here to there

OOOOOH happy tall giraffe

OOOOOOOOH happy tall giraffe

OOOOOOOOOOH happy tall giraffe with an elephant on its elbow

It is perfectly OK if the song doesn't make any sense. The important part is that each word has a matching hand motions and the students have fun! You can make it more practical and change the verb (and it swam from here to there, and it walked from here to there, and it went from here to there) but I think part of the fun is students picture ridiculous animals flying. If you like at the end you can end with the students drawing a picture of their favorite combination.

I have used this is Spanish as well (Cornejito cariñoso con una mosca en la nariz...) when practicing body parts with little ones in the States.

For those of you who love the Dutch version so much you want it on your IPOD to treasure forever and ever I have found a few copies. You can pick from the one on your left or your right.