Racing for the Characters in Duck on a Bike

 Duck Week Day Six

Duck on a Bike Character Race

Yesterday was my birthday and we celebrated by enjoying the beautiful weather!  I am just a little sad to say there was NO duck activity in our day.  There were plenty of sea gulls, but no ducks!  So, this post comes a little late, but it is no less fun than some of our other duck posts and the best part is you can do this with ANY kind of book.

Birthday at the beach!  Notice my kindergartner trying to turn his brothers head to face the camera.

The book Duck on a Bike by David Shannon is a lot of fun.  In the story Duck sees a bike that a boy left outside and decides to go for a ride.  All of the other animals on the farm think he is too slow, a show off, or just plain silly until a large group of kids come in riding on their bikes.  When the kids go inside the look that comes over the animals' faces is hilarious!  That page is a fantastic page to just stop reading and ask your child to predict what they think will happen next.  When they turn the page they will see all of the animals riding the bikes, and the farm animals admitting that duck had a great idea!

This book has a large amount of characters in it, so I thought this would be a good story to try a character race.  Before our "race" I had to collect stuffed animals or pictures of all of the characters in the book.  For Duck on a Bike I needed a duck, cow, sheep, dog, cat, horse, chicken, goat, pig, mouse, and children.  If I didn't have a stuffed animal I took plastic cups and taped pictures to them.

I lined all of our characters up outside.

My three year old was very anxious to play and read the book!

I read Duck on a Bike to the boys while sitting on our "starting line".  While I read, the boys took turns running and grabbing the new character from each page.  My three year old got to choose the first character...duck of course!  They actually listened to each page before they went to run for the character.  I didn't think that would happen!

My kindergartner was next.

After a few pages they started to guess which character was coming next.  Then they raced together to get the new character.  This was fun...when my three year old won.

My kindergartner took a break from letting his brother win and decided he should win.  A crying fit was the end result, but everyone got over it, and we went back to playing.  The longer we played the better my three year old got at losing.

After we finished the book, my three year old told me how silly the book was.  He still wanted to play so we made up a new game.  I called out an animal sound and they had to race to pick up the animal.  My older son let his little brother win more than I would have, but they had fun.

Then it was my turn to play and my kindergartner called out animal sounds and took pictures.  I think he liked doing that more than playing the game.  We played for about 45 minutes!  Longer than I thought the game would last!

This was so much fun and we got to enjoy the nice weather at the same time.  I am definitely going to have the kids play this game again, but with a different book!  


Tomorrow is the last day of Duck Week!