The Bub in the Belly

“Ten in the bed” is a very well known and popular song which combines numbers and the amusing idea of falling. There are many books based on the song. In this 2007 version illustrated by Penny Dale, the ten characters are a boy and his nine stuffed animals. Everytime they shout "Roll over, roll over!", one of the toy animals will fall out of bed with a "Thud!" or a "Boink!" or a "Plop!". When all nine toys have fallen out of bed, the lonely boy calls for them and they climb back in and cuddle together and fall peacefully asleep.

Richard reads this book to Ryan with a lot of gusto and Ryan chuckles at every thud, boink and plop.

This is a very good book for all ages and you can use it as a base for teaching concepts like numbers, counting, animals, etc. Here are some ideas from TEFL.net.

We were surprised to see that Ryan recently invented a game where he stands up and then falls down, gets up and falls down again, usually with some sound effects. He usually does this on our big bed but, the other day, we were in Borders and he pretended to fall down on the carpeted floor - he "fell" on his side and stuck one leg up and there was even an "Ah!" to top up the performance! He did it a few times and everyone around him was so amused. I think he got the idea from this book!